The future according to Spike Jonze (ADAPTATION, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH) hopelessly recalls the present. In 2025 people are wearing pastel-coloured shirts and flannel pants pulled too high. People interact less and less with each other and more with their computers. Keyboards are redundant and computer games now take up the entire living room with their 3D holograms. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a shy, moustached man who makes his living writing handwritten personal letters for other people. Lonely and heartbroken after his marriage breaks up, he is intrigued by a new, intelligent operating system (short OS) that promises him companionship. His personalised operating system is named “Samantha” and is designed to learn. She (the voice of Scarlett Johannson) is indeed charming, sexy and hyper-intelligent. Theo spends more and more time with Samantha and they fall in love. After the honeymoon period that includes daily audio sex, the pair becomes an official couple –they fight, they make-up, they go on double dates. Yet soon their differences become apparent. The melancholic Theo is still mourning the end of his marriage, and Samantha is in the process of finding herself and looks to experiment with everything possible. Jonze creates a completely believable world with its own rules, a world in which everything is different yet familiar, and one in which a having a relationship with an artificial voice doesn’t just seem possible but makes total sense. HER is a unique film –clever science fiction, gentle satire, and a pastel-coloured elegy in search of a counterpart.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Carla McDougall