Movie info via Sundance:
Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.
As filmmakers Sam & Andy demonstrate in their wildly imaginative debut feature, telling the love story of a smart buoy and an orbiting satellite that spans a billion years and probes the mysteries of being and consciousness requires legit storytelling dexterity. Love Me’s whimsically philosophical, shape-shifting structure ingeniously weaves together the real, the virtual, and the surreal. Its star-crossed, web-paired metallic protagonists — inhabited in different forms by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun — awkwardly navigate romance and companionship, equipped only with untold petabytes of archived web data, social media, and online videos. Awash in these mediated experiences and fabricated expressions of love and identity, they yearn to understand who they are, whether their feelings are real, and for that matter, whether they are real.—JN
Review:
What happens when Me meets Iam is either the interesting question or the dull A.I. dynamics of Love Me the Kristen Stewart (Me) and Steven Yuen (Iam) sci-fi animated love story (of sorts) between a smart buoy (model 350) and a space satellite of no specific branding or origin.
The two are the only last mechanical semi-sentient proto life forms left on earth after some unexplained all life destroying apocalyptic event. Somehow the internet is still woking, at least Google and Facebook. A search of the sky leads the buoy to discover the satellite who is also searching for any sentient life. They eventually resolve their misunderstanding as to one or the other or both qualify as a life form. After determining that they are both aware and alive they decide to try internet dating, establishing human avatars for the occasion. All this happens while the earth is slowly hurling to the sun (this takes billions of years according to the inter-titles).
They learn how to be human by watching videos and reading everything humanly possible through Google search. (Of all of human achievement social media is the only things that survives mankind?) They particularly structure themselves after the de facto social media couple- Liam and Deja. The movie revolves around whether the satellite and the buoy can determine which is a fake or real/true.
I found this A.I. romcom cute and innovative in the first half, dull and derivative in the second. Kristen Stewart, who most will concede is near the apex of female beauty, gets less interesting as the CGI evoles/devolves into more human looking textures. It’s a severe disappointment to every man in the audience, who will take issue with Steven Yuen being not only the perfectly evolved handsome man, but Stewart’s perfect match.
I’ll give Love Me credit for creating interesting questions about self-identity and the definition of true love. The buoy and the satellite prove you don’t need to be human to know love, or even know yourself. It takes them billions of years to understand that they don’t need human constructs to see and know the true beauty and essence of their mechanical being- just the earth hurling into the sun to burn off all the human illusions. To live is to love and to love is to live is the palindrome of life.
Love Me gets a score of 3/5 or a B.
It’s streaming as part of Sundance 2024 . The virtual part of the festival runs from January 25-28.
Credits:
- DIRECTOR(S)SAM ZUCHEROANDY ZUCHERO
- SCREENWRITERSAM ZUCHEROANDY ZUCHERO
- PRODUCERKEVIN ROWELUCA BORGHESEBEN HOWESHIVANI RAWATJULIE GOLDSTEIN
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSDANIEL BEKERMANCHRISTINE D’SOUZA GELBCONNOR FLANAGAN
- CINEMATOGRAPHERGERMAIN MCMICKING
- PRODUCTION DESIGNERZAZU MYERS
- EDITORJOSEPH KRINGS
- MUSIC BYDAVID LONGSTRETH
- MUSIC SUPERVISORJEMMA BURNS
- COSTUME DESIGNERANGELA GANDERTON
- ANIMATIONKICKSTART ENTERTAINMENT
- PRINCIPAL CASTKRISTEN STEWARTSTEVEN YEUN
- YEAR2024
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYUNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH
- RUN TIME92 MIN
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