By Jonathan Romney on December 19, Her depicts a similar scenario, up to a point. Her is set in one of those cinematic futures that are barely further away than next week.
The setting is Los Angeles, where the colors radiate with a gentle candy glow, and the clothes have a s cozy childishness about themβbig glasses, tucked-in shirts. Everyone seems happy and independent yet oddly detached, forever in private conference with their phones; seem like any world you know? The notion of intimacy has so fallen into disrepair that protagonist Theodore Twombly Joaquin Phoenix makes his living custom-composing intimate letters for others, printed out in an authentic hand-scripted look: the company is called beautifulhandwrittenletters.
Theodore is good at his job, a true artist when it comes to voicing intimacy on the behalf of others. Then he gets a new operating system for his computer, one tailored to his personality and needs.
Before long, Theodore falls for Samantha and her perfectly attuned empathyβand, bizarrely, she falls for him. She develops a consciousness and, with it, a system of emotional and even sexual response. For a long time, things only go wrong between the lovers when they overreach with their sexual explorations and hire a woman to play surrogate. What if computers could be better people not to say more adult, given the spoiled, numbed, infantilized humans we see here?
Photographed by Hoyte van Hoytema, designed by K. Thoughtful, original film criticism delivered straight to your inbox each week.
