Back in 2015, I reviewed a film called The Lobster. It was early days for this blog, and indeed one of the first reviews I’ve put together that I would describe as a proper ‘deep dive’, and… yeah, it is very much a snapshot of where I was at that point in time. As a writer, it showed me still figuring out my own style and being able to break down my own thoughts regarding film, but as a person, it was from when I was both single and still trying to figure out where exactly my sexuality landed on the broader spectrum. Writing about love when you have limited and contentious experience with it comes across pretty damn clear, or at least it does for me reading it back nowadays.
I bring this up because this film, made by Christos Nikou who has collaborated with Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos in the past on films like Dogtooth, feels cut from a similar cloth in its perspective on love and romantic relationships as a societal construct. It aims for the same deadpan dystopian atmosphere, only not as crushing as the “find your partner or be forced to become a literal animal” impetus of The Lobster. Instead, we have the presence of the Love Institute, a relatively new structure in this world that has created a fool-proof scientific test to see if a couple is genuinely in love with each other… that involves them pulling out a fingernail and comparing the two. Ouch.
It follows Anna (Jessie Buckley), who has just started work at the Institute, as she lives through a stable domestic routine with her boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White)… and begins to form a bond with co-worker Amir (Riz Ahmed). The performances within this triangle fit the brief as far as maintaining a certain social and sexual chemistry with each other, and their dialogue regularly pokes and prods at the absurdity of this kind of societal arrangement. That relationships must be proven to be completely and irrefutably strong, because every person has that singular person that they are destined to be with, and being with anyone else is simply a waste of time. Divorce is frequently brought up, both by the characters and the set design, as being one of the main reasons for the Test being implemented, as if deciding that you shouldn’t have to be stuck with someone you don’t love anymore is the worst thing a person can do.
While it’s certainly interesting in how it deconstructs a lot of the personal and collective expectations concerning love and the innate urge to “test” its validity, I find myself not as invested in the overall package as I was with something like The Lobster. For one, the story and the specifics within don’t carry the same fascination as the larger themes they’re in service to, which can make the actual events on-screen not as engaging as I would’ve liked.
And for another… well, this just doesn’t examine the bigger questions as well as other works have. And I’m not just talking about The Lobster either; with its core concept about using technology to determine our romantic couplings for us, it has shades of Black Mirror’s Hang The DJ as well. However, where Lobster leaned more into the ridiculousness of the idea along with the quiet despair it creates, this is more humdrum about the whole thing, with more low-key world-building that ultimately isn’t as interesting to me. As for Hang The DJ, where that story made for one of the more optimistic iterations of technology within that show, factoring in rebellion and ‘love conquers all’ as human impulses for a more holistic view of the idea, this seems slower on the uptake and feels like it builds up to messages that, at this stage, are fairly obvious.
Look, this is still an interesting little curio, adding to this sub-genre of dystopian social sci-fi romance, and the performances are strong enough to keep investment stable on the personal level at the very least. But as a larger message about society’s treatment of relationships, monogamy, and the nature of love as an emotion, it falls short compared to stories that it seems to openly pull from to create its own. It’s good for what it is, but it could’ve been better and has been elsewhere.
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