LONDON: The greenlighting department at Apple certainly loves bit of retro-themed, mildly dystopian programming. Joining the ranks of “For All Mankind” and “Severance” is “Fingernails” — the feature-length directorial debut from Christos Nikou which stars Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed as (possible) soulmates in a world where true love can be validated by a scientific test.
Buckley is Anna, a teacher who lives a stable — if somewhat formulaic — life with boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). The pair have been tested (which involves removing a titular fingernail) and deemed to be categorically, definitely in love, so any anxiety over whether they should be together or not has fallen by the wayside, replaced by a seemingly never-ending trudge of monotonous social interactions and slightly awkward half-conversations about their feelings.
Then Anna takes a job at the Love Institute (the company behind the test and which also provides relationship-strengthening exercises) in a bid to breathe new life into her partnership, but instead meets Amir (Ahmed), a mild-mannered instructor who seems far more in tune with his emotions and sense of romance than Ryan.
Perhaps inevitably, the developing feelings between the pair cause them to question what love means to them. And through subtle, nuanced performances from his two excellent leads, Nikou asks a relatively simple question: Is guaranteed love without risk of heartbreak really worth fighting for?
It’s a thought-provoking premise balanced atop a slightly more precarious narrative device – there’s more than a few holes to be picked in the whole pseudoscientific backdrop. Perhaps in acknowledgement of this, Nikou casts a wonderfully bedraggled Luke Wilson as the sad-sack head of the Love Institute.
Buckley and Ahmed are stupendous, both seeing — and encouraging the audience to share — what makes the other truly special. White, too, is mesmerizingly drab as a man who views the test results as a replacement for any kind of need for emotional engagement. If you can get past the flimsy sci-fi veneer, there’s a beautiful, heart-wrenchingly earnest story here to be celebrated.
