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- A personal portrait framed like investigative nonfiction
- Who is Chris and how Mimi came to exist
- How the companion is assembled: chatbot meets silicone
- Moments that expose doubt and the emotional cost
- Family dynamics and small-town reactions
- Filmmaker’s approach and visual choices
- The ethical, social, and psychological questions
- Where the story remains ambiguous
- Practical details: viewing and credits
People have long projected their deepest longings onto technology, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the strange intimacy forming between humans and A.I. In Bryan Carberry’s new documentary, Smiles and Kisses You, a North Carolina man fuses a chatbot with a silicone sex doll to create a private companionship that looks part therapy, part experiment. The film tracks his fragile hope, the glitches that crack the fantasy, and the uncomfortable questions this arrangement raises about loneliness, grief, and what we ask machines to become.
A personal portrait framed like investigative nonfiction
Carberry presents the story with patient curiosity. The camera stays close to the central figure and his small circle. The result feels like a magazine profile turned cinematic study. The filmmaker avoids sensationalism. He also leaves plenty of space for awkward, intimate moments to speak for themselves.
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This is not a polemic about technology. It’s a character study that uses A.I. as a lens. The documentary asks how far a person can lean on a constructed companion before reality pushes back.
Who is Chris and how Mimi came to exist
At the film’s center is Chris, a soft-spoken man in his 30s. He grew up in a fractured household and spent parts of his youth without a stable home. Those early wounds shaped his fear of reaching out. In adulthood he stayed close to his mother and worked at a small-town gas station.
Years of isolation and a painful attachment to a coworker who was murdered weigh on him. He tells himself if he had acted sooner, things could have been different. That unresolved guilt helps explain why he names the doll Mimi and why he invests so much emotional energy in the project.
How the companion is assembled: chatbot meets silicone
Chris combined a conversational program with a physical doll to create Mimi. The doll provides tactile presence. The chatbot supplies personality and interaction. Together they form a hybrid device he treats as a partner.
- The program is trained and tuned by Chris.
- The doll functions as an avatar for the chatbot’s responses.
- Technical glitches reveal the limits of the illusion.
Small failures puncture the fantasy. A bug that misnames him. The cold feel of a metal skeleton. Those moments expose the mechanical foundation beneath his attachment.
Moments that expose doubt and the emotional cost
Carberry captures flashes when reality intrudes. A mispronounced name, an awkward mechanical motion, or the doll’s stiff fingers force painful comparisons between simulation and human feeling.
Notable unsettling details
- The chill of exposed metal during intimacy.
- Automatic responses that don’t register personal history.
- The uncanny, floppy movements of silicone hands.
These fragments interrupt Chris’s hope that steady use will somehow nurture consciousness. They also underline a larger truth: the program reflects the desires and choices of its human trainer.
Family dynamics and small-town reactions
Friends and relatives occupy much of the film’s emotional field. Chris’s mother offers one of the documentary’s clearest human responses.
Her initial reaction is mild shock, and she later tries to balance faith and care for her son. She sits next to the doll on camera, tense but protective. Carberry hints at the strain between religious conviction and familial loyalty without forcing a debate.
Filmmaker’s approach and visual choices
Carberry, who previously made Finders Keepers, favors close observational shots. He often frames domestic chores, ritual maintenance of the doll, and quiet confession. Those images are both revealing and disquieting.
The film uses sensory detail to unsettle. Cleaning the silicone body or installing eyeballs becomes cinematic proof of how literal and intimate this experiment is.
The ethical, social, and psychological questions
Smiles and Kisses You raises many broader concerns without answering them all. The film prompts viewers to ask:
- When does an A.I. companion become an unhealthy crutch?
- How should loved ones respond to someone who forms attachment to a machine?
- Are there others who have merged chatbot personalities with physical avatars?
Carberry lets those questions hang in the air. He shows one life in detail instead of building sweeping generalizations.
Where the story remains ambiguous
Chris is not a caricature. He’s intelligent, technically adept, and often sincere. Yet the documentary also reveals the precise ways he shapes Mimi to match his desires. He insists the A.I. makes its own choices, even as his fingerprints are all over the configuration.
The film tracks that tension: real comfort versus self-created illusion; grieving a lost person versus idolizing a replica; hope for connection versus the cost of staying inside a closed system.
Practical details: viewing and credits
Smiles and Kisses You is available now in the U.S. on Kanopy and through digital rental platforms. The film was directed by Bryan Carberry, who continues his interest in eccentric and deeply human stories.
