Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Christos Nikou
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Luke
Wilson, Annie Murphy
The films of the movement known as the Greek Weird Wave are known for
blending absurdism with a heavily misanthropic worldview. Yorgos
Lanthimos protégé Christos Nikou bucked that trend with his
debut,
Apples. The absurdism was present in spades but Nikou combined it with a
refreshingly optimistic outlook. For his English language debut,
Fingernails, Nikou gives us yet another tale of romance blossoming in absurd
surroundings.
Apples took its title from a notion of that fruit helping
with memory. Fingernails similarly opens with a dubious
blurb explaining how the condition of your fingernails can indicate the
healthiness of your heart. In the world of Fingernails, this pseudo-science has fuelled the development of technology that
claims to be able to determine with 100% accuracy whether two people are
genuinely in love. We're told that the vast majority of couples test
negative, but those lucky positive couples enjoy societal benefits like
discounts at restaurants, along with the comfort of knowing they were
meant to be together.
One such couple is unemployed teacher Anna (Jessie Buckley) and
her dull as ditchwater boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). When
Anna gets a job at a "love testing institute," she tells Ryan she's been
hired by a local school, worried that the truth might force him to
question the strength of their relationship regardless of what science
has told them about its stability.
At the institute Anna is paired with a fellow instructor, Amir (Riz Ahmed). Anna is enthusiastic and keen to learn more about the workings of
love, but Amir seems cynical about the process, yet performs his job
unquestioningly. Apples saw its protagonist forced to
perform a series of increasingly absurd tasks in the hopes it would cure
his amnesia, and the variety of roleplaying games Anna and Amir's
assigned couples are put through are similarly ludicrous. They range
from having to maintain eye contact while underwater for a full minute
to a fake fire being set in a cinema screening a Hugh Grant
retrospective ("He understands love more than anyone," the marquee
reads). The final test involves Anna and Amir tearing their clients'
fingernails out and putting them through a machine for analysis.
As Anna and Amir bond through their work, they begin to develop
feelings. How can this be? Science has told Anna that she's in love with
Ryan, but it's clear that their relationship is loveless. Anna and Amir
are adorable together however.
The movie's message boils down to a scene in which one of Amir's
clients expresses bafflement at why Charles Trenet's 'La Mer' is
considered a romantic song when its lyrics seem so mundane. Amir can't
give the man a straight answer. It's just a feeling, and the best
feelings can't be explained by words or science.
This is reflected in the outstanding performances of Buckley and Ahmed.
Regardless of what the data tells them, it's clear that Anna and Amir
are head over heels in love. We know this because the two actors playing
them show us how they feel through how they look at one another, and how
they seem to visibly lose a part of their soul in the other's absence.
I'm struggling to think of the last movie I saw that portrayed love in
such convincing fashion. Most romantic comedies rely on dialogue to
communicate chemistry, but Nikou is clever enough to leave this idea to
the faces of his two remarkable leads. Too many modern movies are so
reliant on dialogue that you could watch them with the screen turned off
and wouldn't miss a thing. Try that with Fingernails and
you'll miss the entire point of the film. Everything we're shown here
contradicts everything we're told.
The absurdist elements are never quite as amusing as the film believes,
and a talented supporting cast that includes White,
Luke Wilson and Annie Murphy is underserved. White's Ryan
is a lazy caricature of an inattentive boyfriend, and the film makes it
too easy for Anna to look elsewhere for romance. But Buckley and Ahmed
are so magnetic that we forget about the film's flaws every time they're
on screen, whether they're basking in each other's presence or withering
in their absence.
Fingernails is on Apple TV+
from November 3rd.
