REVIEW: Fingernails [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 113 minutes
Release Date: October 27th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Apple Original Films
Director(s): Christos Nikou
Writer(s): Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner & Stavros Raptis

Sometimes, being in love is lonelier than being alone.

After getting laid off as a result of her school closing, Anna (Jessie Buckley) begins interviewing for a new job. Amongst her teaching applications is also one for the Love Institute run by a man named Duncan (Luke Wilson) as a service to help couples connect en route to a controversial new technology that scientifically confirms or denies your love for each other. Anna applies there mostly because she believes her “test-sanctioned” relationship with Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) has grown stale. She asked him to take classes with her to rekindle their spark, but he refused. So, by getting a job there, she can test and restrengthen their bond herself.

It’s an absurdly fascinating and thought-provoking premise the likes of which you’d expect from Apples filmmaker Christos Nikou. More than just focus this clandestine experiment on Anna and Ryan, though, Nikou and his co-writers Sam Steiner and Stavros Raptis bring a third party into Fingernails via Amir (Riz Ahmed). He’s Duncan’s star instructor and Anna’s new supervisor/partner showing her the ins and outs of the institute’s offerings. And Anna might just be falling in love with him. Unless it’s merely lustful longing born from her uncertainty with Ryan. But is there really a difference? Is love enough to keep two people together? Is it even enough to bind them in the first place?

These are the questions that I asked during the course of the film. Questions I hoped Nikou and company would answer. In some respects, they do by inevitably forcing their characters to confront the truth that biological imperatives aren’t conducive to emotional and psychological desires. Divorce isn’t solely a product of two people not loving each other anymore. Many times it’s about one person not being able to stay with the other despite that love. Married couples survive affairs all the time too. A person doesn’t just stray because they’ve lost their love. Sometimes it’s a result of lost attention. A cry for help. Love has infinite definitions.

Fingernails does more to get us to think about those definitions than it does to actually define them or take a stance. It’s actually quite “all sides” in its presentation by centering the alt-universe where this technology exists—ostensibly microwaving two people’s fingernails and measuring the results as either 100% (both love one another), 50% (one is in love, the other is not and they can’t know which), or 0% (neither loves the other)—above the characters themselves. Nikou is using them to apply pressure to themselves as a result of this test looming above their heads. Do you break-up if you don’t get 100%? Do you stay together because you do despite not really liking who you’ve become with them?

There are too many interesting questions to call the whole a failure and too many holes and distractions to deem it a success. Regardless, I do think it’s worthwhile. Some of the dry humor is very effective and some romantic moments are too. And the overall melancholy insofar as someone’s heart needing to break in order for another’s to be full does resonate. In the end it’s really about waking up to the reality that you cannot let someone else’s feelings dictate your own whether man or machine. You must follow your gut and let honesty and vulnerability rule. Buckley, Ahmed, and White are the perfect trio to test those boundaries. The premise is unfortunately better suited to platform their results than the script.