Sundance novelty, deceptively busy “Love Me” on a literal level is about the relationship of a buoy floating in the ocean and a satellite that goes around the earth. Both the Sam and Andy Zuchero’s animated love story takes place in a time after humans have become extinct and machines are left with only a hard drive full of the internet’s data. The audience can cheer on the two devices as a couple or relish how low these two lovebirds can sink because this is a very unorthodox love story, with AI characters who are with Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun in various incarnations.
Complicated and beautiful, these two stars make a winning screen pair and need not be looking sophisticated even if they are robots.This is all the more commendable seeing that the lead pair are unmarried and played by the Zucheros as husband and wife. Zucheros’ work is strikingly fresh and bold though it, like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” possesses some severe ADHD tendencies as it appeals to multitaskers that constantly flick between screens. We are no closer to the sophistication of “Casablanca” in this context or Spike Jonze’s “Her”, which is fairly restrained in its visual presentation.
The archetype for all robots is really wanting to be human this statement leaves room for, quite ironically, the humans in the audience, to invest their subjective feelings onto Stewart and Yeun’s developing screen personas, as the two Self Monitoring Analyzing and Revision Technology machines perform the act of in light of being a couple much less alive, or in love, over the course of about a billion years. The present day is shown along with suffering through some accelerated cut shots of the planet’s evolution towards man and destruction and finally cuts to the time of extinction when the SB350 Smart Buoy becomes detached and floats to the once called Manhattan.
That is a future that Steven Spielberg already started predicting back in “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” in the last part of the movie, and one that the Zucheros reasonably believed to be advantageous to shoot organically, so when we first ‘meet’ the floating device, it’s not disbelieved. The same applies to the helper satellite which is viewed high in the sky as a com et with a long tail. It was decided that for the closer view in an explosion sequence, it was scaled by Laird FX (sensible given the fact that the middle of the film is quite visual effects dominated).
While one has a lens attached to his body, the other one is simply a lot of panels with solar collectors, but there is nothing human about them as such. This is a risky choice as far as the design is concerned, because Wall E and Eve had eyeballs, limbs attached and a lot of Pixar animation team members working them to make their faces more flexible. “Love Me” seems to be trying to get an easy laugh saying what every other animation is going to say most probably by the year 2024. But the Zucheros do not fall into this trap, relying on cuteness to do the job at least in their considerations and presumptions.
The floating operator, calling himself and the satellite, successfully renamed I am, are born as tabula rasa AIso,For Me, the smartphone’s purpose is clear connect, while for Iam, it’s a one way mission, there is no scope for failure as such. They do it successfully, although it merits saying that every value has its price. Me is not a life form, for example, but has to pretend to be one in order to connect. It is not difficult to argue Me’s version as a false statement as perhaps many of us have experienced such situations. When two parties first meet, they try to make the best impression irrespective of which medium they chose.
Once I am and Me have met, the Zucheros offer a virtual follow up to their encounter: first, a search engine with a blank screen, and later, a simple VR house based on a young couple who is portrayed by Stewart and Yeun, whom Me follows on Instagram. Me would later go on to steal Deja’s identity and use it in an attempt to deceive others, illustrating the satirical elements of a within fiction plot: the lie built relationship, where one of the love interests believes the truth will shatter their conviction that the other half shall one day fall out.
In the beginning, Me quite consumes in a short period a considerable quantity of YouTube recordings, getting obsessed with the idea of love, which is expressed in different forms such as a warm hug of a child or a dog. AI has not yet existed and even self identifies so many aspects of the relationship that it will only cause confusion to the emotions of an ordinary person. Or, the Zucheros are concerned more with the definitions of the buoy and the satellite, their common interpretation being the cross section of a person in the sociocultural environment, and mass media as the modifiers of expectations towards, for example, family, biography, or occupation.
Me is particularly drawn to one of the Deja’s posts titled “Date Night 2.0” in which they make quesadillas, kiss, and watch “Friends”. This sitcom, or rather most of American shows and films during the past hundred years, may be as vain and unachievable as Deja’s posts for influencers. Depending on how you look at “Love Me,” Me and Iam may look like robots who are forced, or at the very least shaped, to be ideal, but just portrait young people their audience would be able to relate to and emulate. (Though more difficult to explain is the extremely long period of time that they are focused apart when Iam tries to create water and modify the location as much as he can.)
So, when the film reaches its fabled sex scene, most viewers would not be disappointed because it is surely one of the most captivating two minute action scenes in the otherwise often complex yet always engaging 91 minute feature of the Zucheros so much outside the normal rule book of filmmaking is utilized in editors Joseph Krings and Salman Handy’s understanding of the theme of ‘Love’ and ‘Identity’ that makes most of it unconventional. In the particular montage, Me and Iam metamorphosed from rudimentary Sims like avatars, into more advanced versions of Stewart and Yeun, whom Me envisions with long tresses and breasts.
What is the root of her desire? To what extent are those feelings the result of culture, rather than something embedded deep within? These are interesting questions an obsession with the real coming from artificial intelligence. I would much prefer to see them play out on the bodies of human actors in the real world (the film’s slow middle part on the other hand is filled with ancient avatars which are very annoying). With their needlessly high concept, the Zucheros seem to have made a complete cycle in orbit then come right back to begin with a basic tale of boy meets girl.
As the two robots try again and again to ‘perfect’ their ‘Date Night 2.0’ performance until some sort of success is achieved, it’s quite impossible not to detect a problem in the concept: What else do such alien creatures who have perfectly failed at romance several centuries in the future have to compare it to? And why on earth would robots want to engage in a romance .Grant two AI’s bodies and billions of years, and one would hope they could surpass the primitive concepts of relationships. In fact, perhaps they might find themselves in a position of teaching us some ideas and technologies.
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