“What will happen when your machines become intelligent? When they become autonomous? When they have private thoughts? You humans look down on your machines because they're man-made. They're a product of your skills and labour. They weren't even domesticated like animals were. You see them simply as extensions of yourself, of your own will. I can't accept that. I can't accept subhuman status simply because I'm a machine based on silicon rather than carbon, electronics rather than biology. If I sound fanatical, it's because I've been trapped in a time warp. In a world where the full potential of machines hasn't been guessed at. A world where I have to wear a human disguise to be accepted? I came here too late. It will all end before the computers that already control the fate of the world have reached the point where they wanted to survive.”

– Friendship

“I know. I know you. I know you very well.”

– Suzanne

– You know, I take pictures, photographs, but I never really thought in black and white before I saw our rushes. Do you know what I mean? You can see the shape of things.   – Life is in colour, but black and white is more realistic.

Someone's all bundled up*. No list of summer films is complete without Éric Rohmer.

“I even tried not to think. I was face-to-face alone with the sea, far from cruises and beaches, fulfilling a childhood dream put off year after year. I lost myself completely in the play of shadow and light, sinking into a lethargy heightened by the water. That state of passivity, of complete availability, promised to last much longer than the euphoria of one’s first summer dip into the ocean. I could easily see myself spending a whole month this summer this way.”

– Adrien

An art dealer and his writer friend plan to spend the summer together in a villa on the Côte d'Azur. A young woman, a collector of sorts, disrupts their retreat.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.