Got a date for Valentine’s Day? Well how about asking your computer out?
That’s the brilliant, almost-believable scenario at the heart of this genius ‘Boy meets Siri’ sci-fi/ romance from the director of Being John Malkovich.
Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix, unfanciable in tweedy, Simon Cowell-waisted trousers and a non-hipster moustache) is a lonely, heartsick, almost divorcée who, one day, installs a new Artificially Intelligent computer operating system called Samantha (irresistibly voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who deserves to be the first best actress nominee never to actually appear on screen) and the two form a relationship.
She laughs at his jokes, they have great virtual sex and soon he is even calling her his girlfriend, which, in the very near future, suddenly doesn’t seem that socially improbable. Even, perhaps, unsettlingly enviable.
An offbeat best film Oscar nominee and winner of a Golden Globe for best screenplay, Her is fizziest at its funniest. As the narrative longeurs into melancholy indulgence – too many dust motes dancing dreamily in sunlight – you realise Twombly is not that captivating a character.
Yet it’s still an inspired, playful, erotic and gently tender look at our technology co-dependence, relationships and modern loneliness that is, undoubtedly, the love story of 2014.
