Fin­ger­nails review – light­ly effec­tive despite a flawed premise

This is a film which plays into our soci­etal fix­a­tion with and trust of tech­nol­o­gy as an appa­ra­tus that could be more trust­wor­thy than the sig­nals gen­er­at­ed by our own body. We’re dropped into a near future where noth­ing much has changed: peo­ple dress dowdi­ly; they lis­ten to the same old songs; and take­away soup from an all-night deli still tastes reas­sur­ing­ly awful. Also, love is now an algorithm.

There’s a new-fan­gled test which has been devel­oped to state with bio­log­i­cal cer­tain­ty whether a cou­ple are roman­ti­cal­ly com­pat­i­ble for the long term, or whether cur­rent feel­ings of amour will fiz­zle away when things get com­pli­cat­ed. The way the test is admin­is­tered is that, after a series of wacky tests, the cou­ple are sub­ject to the forced removal of a fin­ger­nail (usu­al­ly the pinkie) which is then placed into a retro microwave and, after a puff of smoke emerges, a per­cent­age appears on a screen. And that’s it. If it’s pos­i­tive you recieve a cer­tifi­cate of love. If it’s neg­a­tive (as the vast major­i­ty of out­comes are), then it’s on your way…

Chris­tos Nikou’s sec­ond fic­tion fea­ture after 2020’s well-liked Apples sees the writer-direc­tor inject­ing a lit­tle bit of Greek ​“weird wave” con­cep­tu­al dead­pan into a soft­ly-spo­ken sci-fi-tinged tale that plays like one of the bet­ter episodes of Net­flix’ wor­ry­ing­ly pop­u­lar Black Mir­ror series (faint praise, I realise). It’s a large­ly office-bound dra­ma with splash­es of romance and humour, and is helped no-end by the chem­istry of its two leads, Jessie Buck­ley and Riz Ahmed.

The psy­cho­log­i­cal basis of the film requires some­thing of a log­ic leap to get on board with, as it does seem dif­fi­cult to accept that the infi­nite­ly-sprawl­ing con­cept of ​“love” has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly mas­tered and now oper­ates in pret­ty much the same way as a Covid lat­er­al flow test. Beyond that, it seems strange and not a lit­tle cyn­i­cal that there would exist peo­ple who take it so seri­ous­ly. Yet the film is per­haps more inter­est­ed in empha­sis­ing the inse­cu­ri­ty that the exis­tence of such a test would cause in cou­ples that just had to know if they were wast­ing their time on a roman­tic dal­liance. It’s maybe a film more about our fear of death than our love of love.

The stric­tures that Nikkou sets for him­self means that he doesn’t stray too far off the reser­va­tion when explor­ing or depict­ing the every­day process of being ​“in love”, as seen between Buckley’s Anna and her 100 per cent lock life part­ner Ryan, played by Jere­my Allen White. The sci­ence is test­ed when Anna, who works at the love insti­tute which is over­seen by Luke Wilson’s new age‑y Dun­can devel­ops a crush with wise­crack­ing co-work­er Amir (Ahmed).

Even though it’s a sto­ry that severe­ly lacks for sur­prise, in both the sil­ly nature of the tests and the ques­tion of Anna and Amir’s latent bond, the actors take the mate­r­i­al seri­ous­ly enough for the film to remain engag­ing enough. The actu­al con­cept is actu­al­ly less inter­est­ing than the implic­it sub­texts about human need­i­ness and our per­pet­u­al need for a God-like fig­ure to reveal the answers to all the impos­si­ble ques­tions in life. Our readi­ness to accept those answers when a false prophet comes along leaves Fin­ger­nails a effec­tive­ly chill­ing finish.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.