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Jan 19, 2024 · ‘Love Me’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun Are Wasted in a Suffocating Sci-Fi Romance. The debut feature from Sam and Andy Zuchero is a love story exploring the intersection between...
- A charming, thoughtful, apocalyptic sci-fi romance in which a buoy falls in love with a satellite
- The Best Sci-fi/Fantasy Movie of 2023
- What's your favorite Steven Yeun role?
- Verdict
By Siddhant Adlakha
Updated: Jan 25, 2024 12:31 am
Posted: Jan 23, 2024 8:29 pm
This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
When describing Love Me – a post-humanity romance between a satellite orbiting a ravaged Earth and an artificially intelligent buoy in the frozen waters near the remains of New York City – the first and most obvious comparison that comes to mind is Pixar’s WALL-E. The similarities extend to the design elements too, from the buoy’s rusty yellow shell and adorable, large-aperture eyes, to the airborne satellite’s heavenly blue glow. But the overlap begins and ends with these superficial flourishes (or perhaps direct inspirations), since the innate humanity of WALL-E’s robot characters is a given. Love Me, meanwhile, is a probing look at what it might take to bring a pair of techno-beings to a human level of understanding and self-awareness, and it works wonders as a snappy, saccharine, and occasionally scary reflection of our contemporary digital world.
When it isn’t unfolding in screenlife segments on a Google-esque interface, Love Me is a scrappy, VFX-heavy film that takes full advantage of its existence in the uncanny valley. Its janky buoy – who, upon attaining a base level of consciousness, dubs herself “Me” – straddles the worlds of animation and live-action, but given its rusty, cycloptic design, this is never a problem. The same can be said of the cubic satellite, who chooses the name “Iam” (or “I am”). As a descendant of the Voyager series, it houses humanity’s last remaining artifacts and knowledge in digital form (which is to say: the vast majority of the internet) as it circles the Earth in anticipation of some future lifeform that may stumble upon the planet.
When the two pieces of technology find one another, they begin scouring the world wide web — seemingly housed in Iam’s database — for information on how to communicate and what it means to be, until Me – who claims to be a sentient being so Iam will spend time with her – suggests they adopt the appearance and personalities of a pair of early 21st century lifestyle vloggers, Deja (Kristen Stewart) and Liam (Steven Yeun). As they proceed to to use a shared digital space (akin to the metaverse), much of the film unfolds in the form of a romantic-dramedy with digital avatars resembling Stewart and Yeun, who deliver tremendously nuanced vocal performances as, essentially, artificial intelligences attempting to be human.
Rather than a familiar tale of androids reckoning with their robotic natures, the new-media roadmap laid out before Me and Iam places Love Me in the distinctly familiar realm of online expectations and the pressures to perform life experiences for a camera. They learn about laughter from YouTube videos of babies, and meaning from Instagram memes. Filmmakers Sam and Andy Zuchero (a real-life married couple) disguise a hilarious study of humanity’s digital footprint as a cutesy rom-com, unfolding in a digital apartment with modernist designs, as Me and Iam repeat gestures and online “challenges” ad nauseam in the hopes of understanding feelings and interpersonal experiences.
Glenn, The Walking Dead
Mark Grayson / Invincible, Invincible
Speckle, Tuca & Bertie
Danny Cho, Beef
Ricky "Jupe" Park, Nope
Other. Tell us in the comments.
Love Me is a film about deep insecurity and feelings of incompleteness, reflected back to us by mechanical beings who are left listless and adrift for literal eons. As much as its focus is technological, it’s an emotional exploration too – a wry and thoughtful magnification of what life feels like when you lose and re-discover your purpose, or you ...
- Siddhant Adlakha
Jan 20, 2024 · ‘Love Me’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun Stare Madly Into One Another’s AIs in Robot-Love Rom-Com. A stunningly constructed if overcomplicated sci-fi fable about how humans put...
Jan 20, 2024 · ‘Love Me’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. Love Me Asks Too Many Questions. By Bilge Ebiri, a film critic for New York and Vulture. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun star in an emo...
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Deereviews7 30 December 2021. It has been a while since a show made me feel so much in the span of six episodes, laughter, love, grief and much more. The acting is fantastic on all accounts, the quality is great and everything seems done professionally. 38 out of 45 found this helpful.
Jan 19, 2024 · By Valerie Complex. January 19, 2024 2:19pm. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun in 'Love Me' Courtesy of Sundance Institute. Photo by Justine Yeung. Set in a post-human world, Love Me,...
Season 1 – Love me 2019 Drama Romance List Reviews 83% Audience Score Fewer than 50 Ratings Friendship, sadness and romance are linked with love in the life of three generations of a family.
