Love Me review – Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun explore love in oddball sci-fi – The Guardian

At Sundance, a competition geared in the direction of acquisition with unsold movies going for the arduous promote, there’s one thing intriguing about people who withhold. Whereas for mysterious romance Love Me, the involvement of the Oscar nominees Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun was sufficient by itself to vault the movie to the highest of many wishlists, its logline was much less of a certain factor. A post-apocalyptic love story between a buoy and a satellite tv for pc was one thing that folks must see to grasp and so there was an uncommon sense of curious pleasure within the air at its packed-out premiere, nobody fairly certain what was about to be skilled.

However whereas the curiosity may need sustained itself for probably the most half, the joy slowly light, the movie an alluring however in the end failed experiment. Somewhat than giving us one thing we really haven’t seen earlier than, it falls too carefully in keeping with different current movies which have felt much less like standalone acts of unique creation and extra like discarded Black Mirror episodes. Whereas not fairly as deadening as Foe or Fingertips, it leaves us with the same sense of frustration, the not significantly gratifying act of witnessing an thought being workshopped in actual time, happier with itself than we’re watching it.

It begins with a daring, and bleak, look into the longer term. Humanity is lengthy gone and a digitally assisted good buoy (voiced by Stewart) is on their lonesome. Someday, it encounters a satellite tv for pc (voiced by Yeun), charged with explaining the top of the world to any life type it’d encounter. Their fractured communication begins to evolve into one thing extra human as they develop a way of what it’s to be alive by way of shreds of a long-expired web. As they get nearer, they begin to change type, modelled after two vacuous influencers, enjoying at being in love earlier than beginning to query what actual love is.

The primary-time film-makers Sam and Andy Zuchero have actually not picked the straightforward route with their debut, spanning billions of years and mixing animation, live-action and a few beautiful, expansive visuals. However ambition solely takes the movie to this point, a giant swing aiming to touch upon and canopy a lot, an excessive amount of, that it deserves solely admiration for attempting reasonably than applause for succeeding. The preliminary scenes, which call to mind the opening stretch of Wall-E, are probably the most endearing, as the 2 objects attempt to work out a method to talk and outline themselves. The swerve that follows, because the movie turns the pair into animated avatars of the influencers that one in every of then covets, has its moments, with the pair caught in an limitless cycle of creating Blue Apron spon-con attempting to interrupt out of the formulation into one thing genuine. However the movie’s grasp of the web and its jabs at social media really feel too broad and much too dated, repeatedly hammering simple targets into nothing.

The Zucheros flit between nearly compelling quandaries concerning the lure of idealised straight romance and the hell of anticipated efficiency inside it to extra rote and repetitive observations about gender. It’s all surprisingly stacked in opposition to its feminine character, who’s painted as an irrational, deceitful nag, whereas its male lead is merely looking for himself exterior of the dynamic she has compelled on to them. A extra entertaining movie may need turned this right into a thriller however with its loudly beating coronary heart on its sleeve, Love Me desires to be a sweeping romance as a substitute, insisting us to succeed in emotional heights that the movie simply can’t take us to (a rating that intercuts between lush Michael Giacchino-esque highs and intrusively annoying jazzy lows doesn’t assist issues). It appears like a brief that was expanded with out sufficient thought for the way it may work as a complete film and by the top, even that curiosity has light too.

Like Stewart, Yeun has labored arduous to distance himself from the boundaries of the style franchise that made him, taking left-field turns when supplied, choosing actor over film star, and this marks one other apparently offbeat selection for them each. They do what they will with their a number of personas however there’s eternally a disconnect with what we’re being advised and the way we’re then made to really feel, in a movie wanting desperately to be cherished that makes it close to unattainable.

• Love Me is screening on the Sundance movie competition and is looking for distribution

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