A whacky romance that delves into science fiction
If John Lennon was right, then all you need is love. It seems a fair enough concept if you forget things like oxygen, water, sustenance, perhaps a bit of money and a healthy vessel of a body, but let’s go with it for the sake of this review. If all you need is love then wouldn’t you want some security in knowing the person you’re sharing your bed with is, indeed, someone you really do love? Ergo Fingernails, a whacky romance that delves into science fiction but alas ends up a romance.
Anna’s an out-of-work school teacher whose idealism gets the best of her when she becomes so enamoured with the Love Institute that she applies for a job there. It’s a place where she and her boyfriend went to get tested to prove they were in love – everyone’s doing it, after all. The results said they were, one-hundred percent. Phew! But as her partner chooses to watch documentaries about caribous rather than take the dance or pottery lessons she steers him towards, she wonders if they’re falling out of it. Should they get another test done? Why tempt it, he asks. Why keep going, she wonders.
At the Love Institute she’s paired with quietly affable Amir, and together they encourage couples to need and want each other before they take their test. In doing this, they simulate a fire while the couples watch a film together so that they feel safe and warm next to each other. They make them stare at each other underwater so the couples experience a form of breathlessness when focusing on one another. And once they’ve completed these and other exercises, their fingernails are plucked straight off their fingers and put inside a microwaveish contraption beneath some computer-type screen that looked like the one my brother had in the late 70s, on which he played Pong. This will finally tell the couples whether or not they are truly in love with one another, thus saving themselves from devastating break-ups and marriages that will ultimately lead to divorce.
Director Christos Nikou worked as an assistant director to Yorgos Lanthimos, and even without knowing such trivia, one can’t help but think of Lanthimos’s outstandingly bizarre 2015 film The Lobster while watching Fingernails. In The Lobster, people who are not coupled must be turned into animals of their choice, so they try desperately to fall in love in order to remain human. Though both Fingernails and The Lobster examine the importance we place on love as a legitimate social structure, Lanthimos would never fall into the category of Director of Romances. He’s too satirical for that, and I don’t mention this to downplay Nikou, only to say that this is an entirely different film and our expectations should veer toward the sentimental. True, there are elements of sci-fi, but in the end it leaves you wanting to re-listen to Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ as soon as you get into the car to drive home, preferably to the love of your life.
The chemistry between the insanely talented Jessie Buckley (as evidenced in The Lost Daughter) as Anna, and Riz Ahmed (as evidenced in The Sound of Metal) as Amir, is gentle yet intense, meaning Marcell Rév’s cinematography hits the sweetest of spots. When the two begin secretly swooning over one another, their falling in love feels not only authentic, but enviable. Is it enough to save this film that could have really hit some searing sitar notes of the peculiar and shocked as much as entertained? It depends on how much you revere romances.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson
Fingernails is currently showing as part of the Adelaide Film Festival
Click here for screening times, and to book tickets.
