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I'm Your Man
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| Year: |
2021
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Director: |
Maria Schrader
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| Stars: |
Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens, Sandra Hüller, Hans Low, Wolfgang Hubsch, Annika Meier, Falilou Seck, Jurgen Tarrach, Henriette Richter-Rohl, Monika Oschek, Inga Busch, Gabriel Munoz Munoz
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Science Fiction, Romance |
| Rating: |
  8 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Alma (Maren Eggert) arrives at what seems to be a swanky restaurant and nightclub for couples and is met by an employee (Sandra Hüller) who introduces her to her date for the evening. He is Tom (Dan Stevens), a dashing chap who does his best to charm Alma with his chat-up lines, though she remains strangely resistant and keen to quiz him on minute details of his knowledge. When they go for a dance on the dancefloor, he is good at that too, until he starts repeating the same words "I am... I am..." and the employee sends for some staff to escort him away, reassuring Alma this is merely a glitch and he should be fixed soon...
If you have not guessed, Tom is a robot, a perfected piece of artificial intelligence designed to fulfil the desires of any woman he is assigned to, and Alma is that lucky lady. So why does she not feel lucky? That would be because this manufactured relationship is more of a professional obligation she is carrying out to secure more funding for her research into cuneiforms - she can get all the money she needs to complete the project by inviting this android into her apartment for the next three weeks, as the company involved are testing their machines on professionals and experts to iron out whatever bugs they may have overlooked.
Some say that in the future, as AI grows more refined, that science fiction such as Westworld (the classic original) and The Terminator, may be banned as they featured versions of androids that are deeply insensitive and do not portray them sympathetically. This is assuming they are able to develop personalities, nay consciousness, that have them attain citizen status which does not deserve that kind of cinematic prejudice of the past. Even this film, which is sympathetic up to a point, would be troublesome because it starred a human actor in the role of a robot - who is to say the robots will not be taking their own parts decades from now?
But there comes a point where the question arises, as it does here: would you shag C3-PO? Stevens did a marvellous job of inhabiting this supposedly perfect man who Alma is resistant to, since she does not buy into the romantic cliches and hackneyed tropes Tom is flogging, which leaves his polite pleas for satisfying her with a frosty reception. Speaking perfect German (his English accent is part of the plot, or it was once he was cast, anyway), Stevens is too good to be true, but just like any algorithm he hones his responses to better serve Alma, and after a while, against the odds, she finds herself warming to him.
Despite the fact that archaeological project she was so devoted to is ruined by Tom's supposed helpfulness when he highlights an Argentinian academic has published a paper shortly before on the same subject. It's as if Alma is being forced by circumstance, some would observe nature and its impulses, to conform to the norm in relationships, and is not keen until her emotions, as if mechanical in style themselves, respond to Tom's gentle coaxing. When she realises what is happening, she is disturbed, just as anyone is when they realise they are mostly operating thanks to basic urges and are not as complicated as they would like to believe, but then director and screenwriter Maria Schrader brings up yet another layer...
Does it matter? And if not, why not? We see Alma's grumpy father who is so lonely in his old age it is making him senile, and her ex-husband is having a baby with his new wife that, as a woman approaching the menopause, Alma can no longer do. Is she on life's scrapheap because she is relegated to being courted by a souped-up washer drier? Or should she just accept that Tom is the best she can do because he will never judge her and always be there for her? It ended on an ambiguous note, but it was one of the most thought-provoking of science fiction movies not to drench the screen in effects, asking questions you may not like the answers to since you cannot help but apply them to your experiences, male or female or anything else. Music by Tobias Wagner.
[I'M YOUR MAN - Releasing in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from 13th August 2021.]
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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