Director: Christos Nikou
Writers: Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner, Stavros Raptis
Stars: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White
Synopsis: Anna and Ryan have found true love, and it’s proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem, as Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute and meets Amir.
Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed deliver touching performances amidst the poor material given to them in Christos Nikou’s sophomore feature, Fingernails. While it might provoke thought-provoking conversations about love in the modern era and the nature of relationships, the high-concept, deadpan rom-com from the Lanthimos protegee contains little insight and intuition, leaving much to be desired.
Everyone knows that love is a complex emotion, one that’s harder to describe or write about because it is more based on a resounding feeling in your heart and soul. If a person asks us to describe it in a few words, there’s a possibility that what we choose to say won’t do justice to how it feels deep inside. We all perceive this emotion differently. Our body gives us dissimilar, yet contrasting in essence, signals that let us know about this sentiment. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it is a fantastic feeling that can’t be replicated. Love can be the flame that lights your fire and a sword that pierces your heart. However, whether it lands on either one of the two strands (or eventually ends up in both), it is equally essential for us to perceive those feelings.
In his sophomore feature, titled Fingernails, Christos Nikou explores this feeling, more so on the side of already constructed relationships, via a high concept that does both favors and disservice to its themes. The Lanthimos protégé creates a world where couples take on a weeks-long process, with various scenarios that range from diving off an airplane to seeking each other’s scent while blindfolded, to determine if they are actually in love with one another. As explained by the characters in the film, these scenarios help the couple build a stronger and more intimate bond. There are three results to this test: 0% (where neither one is in love with the other), 50% (one partner is in love, while the other isn’t), and the rare 100% (where both partners are “happily” in love). All the operators need to determine if they are a functioning couple is one of their fingernails.
At the center of this concept, there’s Anna (Jessie Buckley) and Amir (Riz Ahmed). Anna is an instructor-in-training in the love institution where these tests take place. Meanwhile, Amir is the rising star concocting various compelling scenarios that place the couples in dilemmas to confront their feelings for one another. Even though he has only been there for three months, the institution’s head, Duncan (Luke Wilson), praises him plenty. “We’re not here to try and teach people to fall in love… we’re trying to bring them closer together,” Duncan mentions to Anna. As the days go by, Anna and Amir continue to work to help these people’s bonds, yet amidst it all, there’s a growing infatuation with one another. These emotional exercises put them (and the couples participating) in a challenging position in which they question the status of their connection.
Both of them are in relationships that, from afar, seem as if everything is going well. But, at a more in-depth glance, Anna and Amir are having trouble. Of course, in that society, people in that line of work must have a match. So, it is interesting to see how they try to combat that lingering sadness with the happiness that making people connect brings them. Each “I love you too” that Anna says to her partner, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White), feels like a breath of exasperation that he doesn’t notice. It makes you feel for her – how she tries to make a fractured relationship work without the supposed help of a love-match test. Buckley always gives effective characteristics and piercing facial expressions to her characters. It tends to make the viewer palpably feel every emotion, no matter what persona she’s adopting for the role.
This scenario should serve as a strain to examine how it feels to be in a relationship in a modern world, where technology determines most aspects of devotion. Instead of swiping left or right, two people know they are a match by a machine that has their fingernails. People in that world are searching for an answer to life’s harsh questions about love and everything in between. But even if it isn’t the one they would want to hear, they prefer to endure these types of tests than to talk things over naturally. There’s plenty of frustration within the community upon seeing a person with a bandage on their pinky finger. The question quickly arises: “How did it go?” And the answer, rapidly responded, is almost always that they weren’t a match.
You begin to examine how these people live in a world where a test determines whether or not there’s love in the air. There’s also the possibility that some couples lie that they have indeed taken the test and lie about their results. On paper, this concept seems fascinating and very thought-provoking. But, for a project about the nature of relationships, the film seems to express itself in a way that doesn’t seem like it knows much about love and its equally heart-rending and effervescent complexity. Nikou’s ideas regarding how the characters handle each situation are short-sighted. He uses the deadpan comedy as the catalyst for the slow separation and fracture of the relationships depicted on-screen. But, the problem is that there’s so much dead air (and space) in each scene, whose purpose is to expand on Fingernails’ themes.
The screenplay itself isn’t piercing enough to withstand the dullness arriving from the clinical structure of the film’s procedure. The lead pairing of Buckley and Ahmed is why you feel a minor spark coming out of Fingernails. Their endearing factors as screen performers hold their weight separate from the material they’re being given, particularly the former (who doesn’t miss a single beat in every project she attaches herself to). You get the immediate sensation that the Greek filmmaker is fascinated by this concept, and so is the audience, to a certain point. However, he dedicates too much time to the gags and details about the tests instead of developing proper characters and intricate situations that lead to us resonating and getting something out of the film. When you analyze the material, there’s plenty to chew on. However, what we see on screen has such little insight that it doesn’t deserve such intriguing conceptualization.
