When does a robot stop being a machine and start being conscious? Japanese Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro is exploring this controversial idea, and this film opens with the startling sight of him sitting next to his own robotic doppelgänger. He explores the subtleties that make us human – our gestures, movements and speech – and challenges us to accept these subtleties in robots; but can we bring ourselves to do so? This film sensitively investigates the idea that in our lifetime, “geminoids” – human-like robots – could be integrated into our lives. It’s challenging stuff.

Ishiguro has spent time researching the idea of “sonzai-kan” – a Japanese notion of a “human-like presence” – after his research revealed that the Japanese have higher expectations of their robots and wish them to possess human movement as well as feelings. If sonzai-kan is present then a geminoid is more openly accepted as “human”. At the moment the prospect of being faced with a geminoid is fairly perplexing, but a more socially acceptable robot is already being warmly, if tentatively, welcomed into modern life. Paro, a baby seal robot, is being used in nursing homes as a interactive pet, and is touchingly described by Frau Korner as making her “feel less lonely, that’s how much fun it is”. But is her attachment to a robot a healthy replacement for human contact, or simply a means of evoking a sense of meaning and purpose in its owners?

As the film progresses we are confronted with images of urban industrialism and scenes of startling natural beauty, the juxtaposition of which raises the question: is man-made progress necessarily progress at its best? This and many other complex issues – most notably questions about the future benefits of such scientific engineering – are stirred in a manner that is gentle yet thought-provoking, making Mechanical Love a fascinating study of the fine, rapidly blurring line between science and psychology.