Science Fiction/Romance ‧ 92m
Sam and Andy Zuchero, have made their feature length debut with the unique Love Me. A post-apocalyptic romance between a buoy and a satellite starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun respectively.
The Zucheros begin the film with the creation of Earth and speed through the little blip that is human existence. At some point this century humans die out in a mass extinction event. A solar powered SMART buoy boots up sometime later. During the night, the buoy links up with a satellite, which had been left by humanity to explain what we all were. At first the satellite is uninterested in the buoy, because the buoy is not an actual lifeform. The buoy decides to lie to the satellite, saying they are a lifeform using the online persona of an influencer. The rest of the film is their relationship as it unfolds in their own online.
Much of the heavy-lifting is placed on Stewart and Yeun. They do a great job with their performances shifting from voice work to motion-capture to live action. Despite the time scale of the story being literally billions of years, their chemistry always feels like a new relationship. That dynamic is what the Zucheros are examining. New love, and how we portray ourselves at the start of a relationship. There is also, of course, the expected Asimov-esque questions of what its mean to be human, and what is “real”? The film might not get too deep with these themes, but it does so in an fascinating manner.
WALL-E comparisons are inevitable, and adding to that, much of the film features the motion-captured actors animated in a Pixar/Metaverse manner. As the film progresses and the characters become more defined, so does the detail on the animation eventually working its way to live action. It is one of the more engaging traits of Love Me.
This is what film festivals like Sundance are for, showcasing particularly unusual ideas outside of the mainstream. There are not a lot of post-apocalyptic romances, let alone ones between machines. The style and story might get in the way for many. The insights on humanity and how we portray ourselves will likely come off as pretentious to several as well, but there is an earnestness that helps in the end. Like the characters, Love Me will find its people.
Grade: C+
~Andrew