‘Love Me’: Sundance Review

Dirs/scr: Sam & Andy Zuchero. US. 2024. 92mins

Hundreds of years after humanity’s extinction, two machines are Earth’s last chance for witnessing true love. Love Me starts off like a quirky, indie riff on Wall-E, chronicling the unlikely courtship between a robotic buoy and an orbiting satellite before morphing into a meditation on the way we all pattern our romantic relationships on the media we consume.

A sentimental paean to appreciating the beauty of life

First-time feature filmmakers Sam & Andy Zuchero have delivered an overly precious love story that will provoke cynics to roll their eyes at the cutesy onslaught. But look past the picture’s clear limitations and what emerges is the palpable chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, who personalise this sentimental paean to appreciating the beauty of life.

The winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, where it screens as part of the US Dramatic Competition, Love Me should be a strong date-night prospect for arthouse audiences, with Stewart and Yeun’s celebrity helping to lure in ticket-buyers. Reviews will probably run the gamut, with some viewers swooning as others sneer at the film’s touchy-feely themes and earnest tone. 

Much as with Wall-E, the film opens on a bleak future in which Earth is now uninhabitable. A smart buoy, alone on the ocean, makes contact with a satellite high above, the two machines beginning to develop a language with which to communicate. (The buoy uncovers a long-dead Instagram influencer named Deja, played by Stewart, on whom she bases her personality, encouraging the satellite to model his on Deja’s boyfriend Liam, played by Yeun.) Living together in a virtual, online space as a couple, the machines quickly discover that trying to mimic human courtship is a fraught proposition.

Love Me’s early stretches draw strong, and not entirely flattering, comparisons to the Pixar classic as the audience follows two adorable robots who find each other during desolate times. Once they establish their ’human’ personalities, however, the film charts its own course, with the filmmakers (who are married) using the romance as a springboard to examine the very relatable relationship traps that people (and machines) fall into once love begins to blossom.

Much of Love Me exists in a computer-animation realm: avatars of the buoy and the satellite (who look just like Stewart and Yeun) go through the steps of behaving like girlfriend and boyfriend. But it quickly becomes apparent that the buoy, who calls the shots, is basing their interactions on what she has seen in Deja’s social-media posts, copying them in eerie detail.

This is not a ’real’ relationship, but instead a manufactured presentation similar to so many aggressively upbeat posts from attractive couples on Instagram and Facebook. Of course, the robot buoy is unaware that such posts are highly scripted, but Love Me criticises how susceptible people are to believing the false narratives of romantic bliss broadcast on social media. 

Unfortunately, the film tends to underline its points, turning a clever idea into a fairly obvious one, and Love Me’s self-consciously innocent/sweet tone can become grating. But what holds the film together is the intelligence and commitment the two stars bring to this occasionally mawkish tale. Stewart and Yeun are rarely on screen, so their performances require nimble voice work — both of them bring tenderness and vulnerability to their roles.

Just like humans, the buoy and the satellite are prone to getting their feelings hurt when they think their partner does not understand them, and the actors convey a palpable range of emotions for characters who are only now learning what emotions are. But emotions are not the only new experience for the buoy and the satellite, and each discovery — whether the taste of cold water or the pleasures of sex — are depicted with touching openness. 

Love Me takes chances in its later reels, attempting sweeping emotional crescendos and questioning how couples can break free of the pressure to live up to the idealised vision of romantic contentment they witness online. And the film is especially frank about how women are conditioned to worry about their sustained desirability. (Will the satellite still love her after he discovers she is just a buoy?)

The film’s whimsical sense of humour frequently does a disservice to the serious ideas at the script’s centre, but Stewart and Yeun ensure that this bittersweet love story stays true to these robots’ nervous, very human need for connection.