Fingernails movie storyline. Set in an uncanny future — or perhaps a slightly alternate present where cellphone technology is nowhere to be found — Anna (Jessie Buckley; Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, TIFF ’22) and her partner Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) have achieved every couple’s dream: they are in possession of a document certifying their true love.
Their comfortable if somewhat mundane life, however, leaves Anna questioning their successful love test, administered by placing their extracted fingernails into a cutting-edge machine. Anna soon begins working for the Love Institute under the tutelage of Duncan (Luke Wilson), which, in addition to determining a couples’ status via the mysterious test, trains them to deepen bonds.
There, she’s paired with the experienced — and devastatingly charming — Amir (Riz Ahmed; Sound of Metal, TIFF ’19) to take couples at various stages of relationships through a series of love-building activities before the big test. As the new colleagues work to ameliorate the connections of clients, Anna begins to wonder if perhaps Amir is her one true love and if trusting her own feelings is a more reliable metric than what is determined by a machine.
Fingernails is a 2023 science fiction romantic drama film directed and co-written by Christos Nikou. The film stars Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, and Luke Wilson. Cate Blanchett serves as one of the film’s producers. The film follows a woman who starts working at an institute that tests whether the love between two people in a couple is real.
Starring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White, Greek director Christos Nikou’s English-language debut weaves an allegory about our desire for certainty, reliance on technology, and the price we pay for losing the connection to our most primal instincts.
For his English language debut, Greek director Christos Nikou (Apples), who shot the film on 35mm, weaves a surreal allegory commenting on our desire for certainty and our reliance on technology. His refreshing voice and dexterous aesthetic combine to create an unflinching warning about what may be if we lose connection to our most primal instincts.
Fingernails had its world premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023. It also screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2023. The movie had its European premiere during the Zurich Film Festival on September 29, 2023. It had a limited release on October 27, 2023, prior to streaming on Apple TV+ on November 3, 2023.
Film Review for Fingernails
ithin the first few minutes of Christos Nikou’s sci-fi-inflected satire Fingernails, in which a medical test has been devised to determine whether two subjects are truly in love, viewers will probably ask themselves why anyone would trust the readout of a machine over their own heart. The only feasible motivation presented in the film is that it helps predict the likelihood of divorce in future – but why throw away a good relationship just because a microwave attached to a vintage TV set said so?
Rational audiences will quickly conclude that we can’t do better than to follow the nudges of our desires, and pay the magic love science – how does one measure love, anyway? – about as much mind as we would a compatibility quiz in the back of a magazine. And yet it takes the characters in this misbegotten speculative thought experiment nearly two hours to figure that out and notice the gaping hole in the middle of a paper-thin premise.
Nikou, formerly an assistant director to his Greek countryman Yorgos Lanthimos, makes his English-language debut in much the same way as his mentor did, with a conceptual amendment to the laws of attraction. But where Lanthimos’ film The Lobster brought a mordant non-realism to a take-no-prisoners spin on dating, this film takes a more pedestrian approach to relationship insecurity, with one quirky hook.
Following the sadistically comical lines laid down by Lanthimos, Fingernails’ storyline requires that all test participants allow an administrator to rip off a nail with a pair of pliers. Even that has a literal-minded stupidity to it: an opening title card states that malfunctions of the heart first manifest as symptoms in the fingernails, and in a moment of desperation, one woman becomes convinced that they are the source of her anxiety, that stubbier digits will erase her problems.
That would be Anna (Jessie Buckley, her acting standard of excellence softening the moronic decisions her character keeps making), a former teacher now working at the Love Institute founded by the earnest, idealistic Duncan (Luke Wilson). At home, she lies about her new job to her boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White), whose beefy forearms and Siberian-husky baby blues can only do so much to make up for his lack of sexual interest in her and his fondness for the dullest documentaries ever made.
Her eye lands on her sensitive coworker Amir (Riz Ahmed); their comfortable banter soon solidifies into the office closeness that weds work-wife to work-husband. As they coach couples to foster intimacy in preparation for the big exam (the funniest method being a Pavlovian shock administered whenever your partner leaves the house, so as to condition you into missing them while they’re away), Anna starts to wonder whether she could have it better.
There’s a pearl of wisdom buried under a layer of bivalve mucus in here – namely, that love must be actively maintained and will wither if taken for granted. Anna does not seem particularly invested in working on her relationship with Ryan, never asking him to be more present or communicating that she has no interest in spending 90 minutes learning about rivers. She seems to want to blow up her life. It’s a tendency to self-destructive bad behaviour with which Nikou could really do something, but he’s got a sentimental streak that holds him back from putting the screws to his characters. In The Lobster, courtship was a fascistic, compulsory series of rituals and challenges, but Fingernails depicts a recognisable romance not far from the everyday.
Perhaps that’s unavoidable, since the natural chemistry between two stars of Buckley and Ahmed’s calibre would be tough to tamp down. Buckley in particular can seemingly do no wrong; when she quietly sings Yazoo’s Only You at her desk, the audience can see everything Amir sees in her. But the evasive, guarded acting from the main players can only do so much to elevate the paltry material Nikou gives them to work with. A long, fitfully amusing walk down a short road.
Fingernails (2023)
Directed by: Christos Nikou
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Luke Wilson, Christian Meer, Amanda Arcuri, Annie Murphy, Katy Breier, Clare McConnell, Nina Kiri, Jim Watson, Juno Rinaldi
Screenplay by: Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner, Stavros Raptis
Production Design by: Zazu Myers
Cinematography by: Marcell Rév
Film Editing by: Yorgos Zafeiris
Costume Design by: Bina Daigeler
Set Decoration by: Kari Measham
Art Direction by: Mathew Birtch
Music by: Christopher Stracey
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Apple TV+
Release Date: August 31, 2023 (Telluride), October 27, 2023 (United States)
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