Between Black Mirror and the ubiquity of catfishing, the future of romantic relationships is a source of endless fascination. If our preferences and daily lives can be predicted, does that mean an algorithm can select an ideal partner? The new German romantic comedy I’m Your Man takes this idea a step further: it imagines a humanoid robot whose purpose is to provide physical and emotional comfort for the recipient. Director and co-writer Maria Schrader knows this is familiar territory, so rather than rehash the dystopia of Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the plot is firmly in the mind of her skeptical, wounded protagonist. If the film lacks in pure originality, it compensates with thoughtful, self-aware dialogue and a charismatic performance from an actor you may not suspect.
When we first meet Alma (Maren Eggert), she is a reluctant participant in a strange experiment. A robot named Tom (Dan Stevens) was built for her, and she must evaluate him over a three-week period. Their introduction is awkward: while in a crowded facsimile of a speakeasy, Tom attempts stilted small-talk until he stops functioning. She still obliges, although she would want nothing more than to skip the three weeks entirely. Either out of necessity or curiosity, she finds herself in situations where Tom’s charms have an effect on her. She starts to feel sorry for him – at least up until a point – but then she sees how he might help her through a tough episode of her personal life. Before long, she seriously considers a future with him.
You may recall Stevens from Downton Abbey and genre films like The Guest. In a terrific supporting performance, he dials down his natural charisma and turns Tom into tiny riot of stilted physical eccentricity. On top of being a romantic companion, he is also a powerful computer, and part of the film’s joys is how his powerful processor/recall abilities dovetail with what Alma needs (she tests his capabilities with poetry and complex arithmetic). Like Schwarzenegger’s Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Tom is a “learning computer.” As he spends more time with Alma, in other words, he learns more about what he should do or say. The script suggests that Tom only looks for the next perfect line, except that is not what romance is about, and the way he develops a rapport with Alma is clever. By the time the film reaches its final minutes, he fulfills his promise in ways she cannot anticipate.
The balance between ignorance and manners is what makes the material funny. Tom is deferential to a fault – his understanding of humanity is limited – but that quality can be disarming in positive ways. There is a “fish out of water” sense to the comedy that Schrader never forces, and instead finds specific situations where you might not anticipate Tom to take initiative. Alma is the foil, and her performance is hardly ever comic. Brittle and skeptical, she resists Tom’s charms as long as she can, and while her reasons are too easy to predict, they do a good job of setting up later payoff.
The look of the film is exactly right for the material. Aside from the robots and some holograms, there is no suggestion it takes place in the near future. Everything looks clean and pleasant, perhaps as if we see a polished version of a dystopia. Tom’s clothing choices are a particularly good flourish. Every line and hem is perfectly in place, and his color/pattern palette is exactly what you might expect to find on a mannequin. Like the function of his humanoid genitals, each additional detail about him leads to the same inevitable question: no approximation of the real thing can ever be good enough.
What ultimately elevates I’m Your Man is Alma’s fierce intellect. She is an academic and researcher, and indeed her whole purpose is to evaluate Tom in ethical terms. There are many scenes where Tom is a sounding board, and she persuasively litigates each trap that such a humanoid will soon present. This all culminates in a bittersweet, wry conclusion, one where Alma serves as a resigned prophet. For such a light drama about a forty-something professional, this is an incisive film about what the singularity might look like, and it is not the form of murder-bots we know and love from Terminator. Maybe our future relationship-bots will not be so bad after all, Alma figures, since nothing can stop the heart from wanting what it wants.
Photo courtesy of Christine Fenzl/Bleecker Street
The post I’m Your Man appeared first on Spectrum Culture.