Director: JChristos Nikou
Genre: Sci-Fi
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Luke Wilson, Christian Meer
Duration: 94 minutes
Now streaming on Netflix
Watching a love story feels safe, being in love doesn’t,” Riz Ahmed’s character says early on in Fingernails, a film in which the world handles love with clinical precision. Literally. AppleTV+’s latest film transports to a new reality where before venturing into a relationship, couples test out their compatibility to be a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’. While immersive and well-paced, Fingernails, ultimately leans too heavily on its tender moments. The film knows that it is about the frictions that emerge when humanity is rendered through technology, but does not fully reach out to explore a spectrum of emotions. In short, this love story also plays it safe.
nna (Jessie Buckley) and Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) are one such couple. They are also one of the rarer ones, proudly sharing their 100% positive result with everyone. Director Christos Nikou succeeds early on in creating a balance between eerie and absurd. People move about with bandaged fingers, since the process to test your love involves the painful extraction of a whole fingernail. Then, you and your loved one get to know if you are ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Nikou imagines a world where love is announced as a disease, a diagnosis to determine if you are sick. At the testing clinic, a poster hangs in the background listing out the symptoms of love: stomach aches, heart palpitations, sleeplessness, and singing. “Take the risk out of love!” it encourages.
–Grace Kenganzi
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