Her

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The sci-fi genre has explored time and again the relationship between humans and technology. In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner,(1982) Deckard falls for a replicant robot, Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant remake of Solaris(2002) focused on Chris Kelvin’s conflicted relationship with a synthetic apparition of his dead wife whilst Steven Spielberg’s A.I Artificial Intelligence(2001) had a robotic child programmed to love its adoptive parents. Spike Jonze’s Her is in many ways a more grounded film, dealing with aspects of technology that seem relatively contemporary - the Apple voice command of Siri is perhaps the most familiar touchstone. Joaquin Phoenix gives a strong performance as Theodore Twombly; a lonely, introverted writer at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com – a company that writes personalised love letters for couples who lack the ability to communicate affection to their other halves. Twombly’s job is clearly a shorthand for demonstrating that the society he lives in is disconnected emotionally and depersonalised by technology.

However, when Theodore updates his state-of-the-art computer operating system, he realises that it has the capacity to learn about him and even talk to him. His life changes when he chooses a female voice command called Samantha(voice performed by Scarlett Johannsson) to organise his life and he begins to fall for ‘her’.  Initially the film is effective in setting up the sense of isolation in Twombly’s life through his lack of human contact; his relationship with a cutesy yet foulmouthed video game character, his awkwardly plutonic friendship with his co-worker(Amy Adams) and an embarrassing phone-sex encounter that frighteningly echoes the way physical interactions seem to be playing out in the 21^st century.

The film exists in a strange,‘hip', utopia of the avid Apple product consumer, where the men of this future wear high-waist trousers and geek-chic glasses – an aesthetic which works on a satirical level, but you get the feeling that Jonze is taking all this a little too seriously. This science-fiction construct is shot through a meritoriously soft-focus lens making everything on screen seem both pleasing to the eye and kind of plastic-y at the same time – this having the effect of blurring the perceptions of reality and numbing physicality within a strange dreamlike world.

The relationship between Theodore and Samantha is largely compelling and the occasions where he attempts to create more tangible, sensory, meaningful connections to bring her into the real world – taking her on dates via his smartphone, letting her speak to his friends – are oddly captivating. Her sometimes echoes Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer(2009) in its dreamy, indie, slightly annoying offbeat tone and there are other times when it has the genuine sincerity and sensitivity of, for example, Lars and the Real Girl(2007) – a film where Ryan Gosling’s character attempts to humanise a blow-up sex doll. At best the film is impactful in portraying the sensory and sensual barriers between a man-machine relationship, but the delicacy of the performances and the drama is at times lost within an overwrought and overripe silliness mixed with some clichéd romantic ideas. The ending is a rom-com cop-out, but Her is nevertheless, a unique and intriguing watch.