In Fingernails, the idea of romance is fuelled by Hugh Grant movies, pottery lessons and French songs. True love, however, is a matter of science.
Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) and Riz Ahmed (The Night Of) star in this Apple TV+ movie set in a low sci-fi, retrofuturistic society where a revolutionary test allows people to find out if their partners are actually their perfect love match.
Introducing a fingernail from each lover into a microwave-looking machine, the test determines if they are really in love (100%), if they are not (0%) or if they fall into a dreadful third option which reveals only one person in the couple is really in love (50%), although it doesn't reveal which one.
What to Read Next
Greek director Christos Nikou's second feature film is a witty satire exploring romance and relationships, a gentler answer to Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster that feels both captivatingly melancholic and painfully shallow.
Watch Fingernails on Apple TV+
Meet Anna (Buckley), a woman who despite sharing a 100% match with boyfriend Ryan (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White), feels lonely.
Obsessed with the idea of the Love Institute, Anna starts training as one of the instructors alongside experienced worker Amir (Ahmed). Their job is to plan and oversee love-enhancing exercises the couples have to go through before taking the test and finding out if they are meant to be together.
In these exercises, Fingernails displays the bulk of its endearing sense of humour, turning into a self-conscious Romance for Dummies.
In the movie, Hollywood's school of romance is in order, as the potential testees try to identify each other’s smells while blindfolded, watch romantic comedies, sing French love songs at karaoke and have showers together.
Sounds of rainfall bless the background at the Love Institute (because rain is romantic, duh) and hit songs like Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and Yazoo's 'Only You' set the mood.
In one particular exercise, they are instructed to stare at each other underwater for a full minute, since it recreates the feeling of being breathless, which is associated with being in love.
There's an absurdity to the whole idea of the Love Institute, which the movie plays with in order to reach deeper truths. It's not about the silly things people do to fall in love, but about the feelings of loneliness, fear and longing those actions hide.
In this society, love is handled in percentages and absolutes, but the protagonists are about to discover how complicated love actually is. They represent a society desperate for certainty, when love is anything but.
Eventually, increasingly intense stares reveal something is growing between co-workers Anna and Amir, forcing them to question everything they believe in.
Fingernails is captivating thanks to Buckley and Ahmed, who are skilled actors finding chemistry in each stare and smile. In the story they go from painful restraint, as they keep their flourishing feelings in check, to a cathartic liberation.
However, neither their charm nor White's effective apathy as the romanceless boyfriend save the movie from its flaws.
Its premise is not miles away from other love-centred sci-fi tale like The One, John Marrs's novel that was turned into a Netflix TV series in 2021.
In that story, a DNA-fuelled algorithm is able to find one's perfect love match, though, like in Fingernails, it eventually proves technology can't quite predict or control the wildness of love, romance and relationships.
Sadly, neither the Netflix show or the Apple TV+ movie manage to grasp more than the surface of their otherwise compelling concepts.
Its exploration of romance is often funny and witty, but the untamed nascent connection at the centre of it should have burned brighter.
Nikou's style is as melancholic as a Sofia Coppola movie, but without the deep emotional cut that comes with it. After the critically-acclaimed debut Apples, this new movie feels too harmless.
In one early scene, the Love Institute director (played by Luke Wilson) explains about the test's success: "The reason they come to us is to take the risk out of love."
If only Fingernails had moved away from this statement and risked more, it would have been a better movie.
Fingernails is now out on Apple TV+.
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
