oing in to Teknolust, I knew next to nothing about it. Literally, the only thing I did know about it was a tiny, ambiguous synopsis and a killer production still: Tilda Swinton poised with a hypodermic needle, surrounded by and dressed in retina-searing crimson. That image looked sinister and sexy, and echoed a similar aesthetic to Takashi Miike’s 2001 ponderous and gruesome thriller Audition, a film I hate to love.

Perhaps I should be a little ashamed of the fact that a large part of the reason I was swayed into the path of this sub-radar flick was the whole thing looked and sounded like brainy art-house porn. I mean, in addition to the aforementioned signals, there was certainly a porn-friendly plot. Most misleading of all— the only place in Greater Boston they were screening it was at a known “cinema of ill-repute”, one located in a witty, jolly, sex-positive neighborhood that hosts a yearly festival of indie, home-grown adult film.

In my experience, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck, right?

Well, Teknolust is no duck, and it is most certainly not porn! In fact, this movie was so damned cute and sweet that now I feel like a pervert for even thinking it might have been. Shame on me, sure, but let’s get a load of the premise, shall we?

Tilda Swinton plays not one, but four roles in this one, and doesn’t feel spread too thin in any of them. Swinton is Dr. Rosetta Stone, a bio-geneticist working on a recipe for SRAs, or Self-Replicating Automatons. She secretly breeds Ruby, Marinne and Olivia, all of which are also played by Swinton, and each of whom are invariably clad and surrounded by the color corresponding to their names. Her Crayola triplets act as separate “portals” on her E-Dreams website, helping users (and probably herself) fulfil their dreamy illusions. In between shifts, the girls’ downtime is spent plugged into endlessly repeating loops of Hollywood seductions, upon which their entire concept of reality is based.

Minor quirk in the code, though. Dr. Stone’s top-secret cyber babes need close physical contact and the X chromosome found in male sperm to survive. So Ruby, best honed for social interaction, acts as collector and courier, regularly vanishing into the night, purse packed with nothing but a tiny digi-cam and a handful of ruby-red condoms, to collect snapshots and material from willing donors. Meanwhile, back at the E-Dreams ranch, Marinne and Olivia loll dreamily in each other’s arms between turns at the portals, awaiting the special tea and injections prepared with the fruits of Ruby’s labor.

Gee, now why would I confuse Teknolust with porn?

Unfortunately, Dr. Stone’s cover may be blown when Ruby’s “specimens” begin turning up at the local clinic afflicted with impotence and a strange, barcode-shaped rash right between the eyes. The FBI sends in Agent Edward Hooper (James Urbaniak) to fend off what is believed to be some kind of bio-gender warfare, where he enlists the help of cyborg detective Dirty Dick (Karen Black!) in solving the case.

Perhaps even more worrying than an outbreak of an impossible to diagnose, and therefore incurable, STD is when Ruby becomes interested in more than just collecting samples from an inept Xerox-jockey at a local copy shop (Jeremy Davies playing the same cute, mumbling, fumbling, maladjusted shoe-gazer he plays in, like, everything). With this transgression, Ruby begins displaying an autonomy that even Dr. Stone hadn’t anticipated.

Directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson (Conceiving Ada), Teknolust is a fluffy-hearted, sometimes doofy piece of digital candy that I couldn’t help but kind of like. Even though it wasn’t porn.

It’s as shockingly cute as a Tokyo toy store, replete with scenes positively soaking in bright, primary colors, and a story that’s infectiously sugar-shocked with its own futuristic optimism. Hershman-Leeson also surprises with a veritable who’s-who of Hal Hartley alumni. Like weirdly loveable uber nerd James Urbaniak of Henry Fool fame as the deadpan agent, and the devil himself from Hartley’s digital mini-feature, The Book of Life, Thomas J. Ryan (briefly) as one of Ruby’s victims of seduction.

Despite the technological trappings so omnipresent in Teknolust, the message, or at least the heart of it, is an old one. It’s about the difficulties human beings have connecting with one another in any real or meaningful way. The modern spin Teknolust tries to put on this ancient human foible is just how much technology has allowed us to both widen the intimacy gap as well as to potentially get more personal with a much wider audience than ever before.

Ruby, Marinne and Olivia are more than just made-to-order girls acting as operators for the fantasies of anonymous users on Dr. Stone’s website— they are facets of Dr. Stone’s personality itself. Facets that she herself cannot integrate into her public personae, preferring to remain an introverted, eccentric and brilliant but awkward loner.

Ten years ago, many of the other themes in Teknolust might also have been interpreted as a metaphor for AIDS, but that clearly doesn’t seem the case here. Teknolust keeps it light and keeps it bopping along, and though it’s unacceptably goofy at times, it is fun nonetheless. Also, really quite funny.

Watching Agent Hooper (Urbaniak) and Dirty Dick (Karen Black) on-screen together is fun in a way that makes you wish you’d see a salacious story in a tabloid about them hooking up. Also, Dr. Bea (Al Nazemian) is low-key hilarious as he interviews virus sufferers in the same barely audible whisper every single time. I couldn’t help but think of him, asking terrifying and embarrassing questions of legions of infected men in his tiny, soothing voice, as “the penis whisperer”.

But seriously, and perhaps as a little aside, what is going on with Jeremy Davies? The first movie I saw him in was The Locusts, an admittedly terrible movie that I can’t say no to whenever it pops up on cable. In it, he played the emotionally damaged Joseph “Flyboy” Potts, a boy who was mute throughout the beginning of the film, and, when he finally spoke, mumbled haltingly in low tones. Then, he played Tom-Tom in another atrocious film, Wim Wenders’ Million Dollar Hotel where he rarely spoke, but when he did, mumbled haltingly in low tones. I actually started to wonder if he was, y’know, “special” or something because it was the same “slightly off” shtick in both cases, almost exactly the same character, in fact. I’ve seen him in a few other things since (Secretary, CQ) that made me wonder if maybe I was just too sensitive to the actor’s actual personal quirks; but no, he whips out the exact same Tom-Tom-Flyboy-Mush-Mouth character for Teknolust. The same gracefully fumbling, stuttering lost puppy act in at least these three movies! What the hell? I want to say Jeremy Davies is in danger of becoming a casualty of typecasting, but the only reason I don’t is because I’m afraid I haven’t seen enough of his movies to know that this is old news.

On the flip-side, what’s great about Teknolust is without a doubt Tilda Swinton. Though more caricatures than actual characters in all four cases, she slays in her quadruple role, keeping each of them in their colorful compartments tightly enough so that they all seem like different creatures altogether.

And if I keep mentioning how colorful this movie is, that’s because it’s just so incredibly over-the-top and fun to look at that it’s a presence all its own. Maybe it’s because my cinematic palette tends more to the black/white/gray family, with occasional splashes of red and green, but it’s almost shocking to see so much color used with such force as this.

Think of Teknolust as a giant jar of chewy, sweet candy. Beautiful to look at, rainbow hued candy in a spotless glass jar. Candy rich with refined sugars and devoid of nutritional value. Even though the sweetness might occasionally stab at that cracked molar, you keep grabbing for more because eating candy is fun. Too much sugar can be bad for you, sure, but in this case, a little sweet indulgence wouldn’t hurt. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you to bring a toothbrush.