In the conceptual sci-fi romance Fingernails, a simple test is all it takes to confirm a couple’s romantic compatibility. “No more uncertainty, no more wondering, no more divorce,” reads a poster advertising the test, that plucks off a participant’s fingernail, zaps it in a computer and produces a positive or negative diagnosis. Jessie Buckley’s Anna may have received a positive result three years ago with her boyfriend Ryan (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White), but now something is nagging at her. She and Ryan are fine together: unexciting but largely content. That said, maybe she ought to sacrifice another fingernail and get clarification that they’re still really in love?
With its jokes expressed as deadpan as possible and its characters awash in spiritual melancholy, Fingernails makes for an easy companion piece to off-beat romances of the recent past: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Lobster are obvious influences. The latter feels particularly important, with director Christos Nikou starting off as a protégé of Lobster filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos. But missing here is a sense of slight indifference to the logic-defying technology that drives the plot. Nikou devotes so much time to laying out the minutiae of the test’s rules that it becomes slightly distracting, only succeeding in opening up further questions. For instance, if a couple gets “50 per cent” on their love test – as opposed to zero or 100 – it means only one of them is actually in love, but the machine can’t identify who. The drama! But also… huh?
