Love Me

Perhaps in order to draw potential viewers into theaters, Sundance novelty “Love Me” is presented as a very busy picture with wonderful special effects revolving around the relationship of a satellite revolving the globe with a buoy stranded in the ocean. Set after the extiction of humanity, in the Zucheros’ unusual take on the romantic comedy, two lovers who are also machines rely heavily on information from one server, populated by content harvested from the web and social networks. The audience can start rooting for the two devices but they can also go as deep as they wish here, in what could be the most unorthodox version of romance, projecting themselves into AI frankenstein quad plants played by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, who in this case are sentient wood.

Those two stars are beautiful and complicated, and even though they are technically just playing two avatars of robots, idealized versions of a couple, we still want them to be together. As a couple, the Zucheros are creative, though they do not manage to avoid some of the ADHD problems shared with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (nevertheless, both films seem to target the kind of audience that spends its days flicking through various screens). Finished with this elegance of “Casablanca” we are — or Spike Jonze’s ‘Her,’ which is comparatively ‘sparse’ in its decor.

All sinners must die someday. What distinguishes the sinner is their fight against death and their strife to be more than just bestial crawlers. However, there is life within sin and a spark within the sinner himself. Somewhere deep down he cherishes the thought of being larger than life, a being that possesses power and wisdom, and free himself from the constraints of his sinful self. Imagine such a beautiful world full of possibilities. That’s exactly what humanity’s future holds within it. But the question that arises is what will take place for us reach a stage that allows us to envision such a future.

Many generations later, humanity let out its last breath in what turned out to be one of the largest self-formed genocides known to mankind. People with extraordinary qualities began a revolution of sorts which literally wiped out humanity’s utter existence. Thanks to their advanced technological abilities, they were able to extract resources from different planets resulting in their rapid evolution. Time and times once again became mankind’s awful enemy. This is how the era of creation began. The world, a barren wasteland now, was left behind which allowed advanced technological areas of otherworldly civilizations to slowly develop new worlds. This is precisely how mankind survived after losing at its own game. Mankind stood up. With a vision to create a life outside its own planet, it began exploring its surroundings in order to save itself from extinction.

The world began changing as cosmonauts shattered every illusion of limitations and went beyond planets while others valiantly battled to extract the most essential resources that consist of nitrogen and ammonia from gas giants. Humanity understood how untouchable forces operate, helping different civilizations evolve. Elitsa witnessed the core tenets of how their parents built societies just to keep them safe. Make no mistake – this wasn’t about leadership; this was love, a deep primal love that had one single focus: protecting innocence. And just on this notion alone, with nothing else as a motive, humanity eventually decided to create life so that progress and safety could always be accompanied.

One has a lens, the other a series of solar panels, but none is anthropomorphic as such. That is a bold move, in regard to design, considering that Wall-E and Eve had eyes, limbs, and Pixar animators who anthropomorphized constantly. “Love Me” tries too hard on the comedic aspect about some online trends, perhaps from 2024. However, the Zucheros do not seem to employ cuteness as a crutch instead opting to enlist the adult or at least young adult imagination to do the heavy lifting.

The buoy which calls itself me.life.form (or simply “Me”) and the satellite which comes to be referred to as “Iam,” begin life as empty AIs. Me’s purpose is to bond with others while Iam’s mission is to establish contact with every living creature on an ex-occupied human planet. And in fact, they do, but it all begins with a fake: Me is not a life-form, but rather a fake one who is forced to impersonate a living thing in order to make a liasion. It is not difficult to visualize these situations since it has been the same when individuals meet, regardless of virtual or face-to-face, — these embellishments are present in the hopes of meeting a more appealing, accessible or averagely attractive person.

After a link between Me and Iam has been formed, Zucheros offers a virtual environment where their further activities will take place – first a simple search engine with a blank screen and then a very basic VR flat where Me has seen Deja and Liam on Instagram as well – a couple played by Stewart and Yeun. Me robs Deja of her existence, claiming it as her own – introducing a modern version of a well-known wrap concept in romcoms. The concept of building a relationship based on a lie – a lie that one party knows and knows the other party will collapse if the truth is known.

Me starts in a rather active way, getting to be glued to the screen with a series of YouTube videos about love, and love that manifests in many ways (from cute puppies to parent’s hugs). It is not difficult to try to understand how baffling inhuman emotions must be to the AIs that outlive us, but the Zucheros seem to take more of an interest in the buoy as well as the satellite as representations of the organ: Us the people social the way we are and such kinds of cultural icons serve to set our beliefs and anticipations of family and related things.

As I was going through Deja’s post, “Date Night 2.0” in particular, I got a little sidetracked since the young couple is preparing quesadillas, sharing drinks and watching “Friends,” getting cozy. Most things produced in Hollywood in the last century, including the sitcom I’ve mentioned above, could probably be seen as as unrealistic and unattainable as Deja’s social media posts. Me pauses. In this case, perhaps, “Love Me” can be read as a riff on Deja and Iam’s perspectives, portraying ‘ideal’ images they have of their fictional partners (which is more difficult to comprehend than the incredible duration of their separation when Iam is preoccupied with rendering water and improving the apartment design step by step).

The scene that depicts sex, when it finally arrives, provides the most fascinating two-minute segment — out of the Zucheros’ 91-minute film which is often confusing (but never dull) — that you are ever likely to see, in a montage of the more interesting parts of the film. There is much in this film that is unconventional in terms of film editing, which Joseph Krings and Salman Handy had to work through while trying to express unique concepts of love and identity. In the final collage of that sequence, Me and Iam, the merged couple succeeds in transforming themselves into Stewart and Yeun with Me adorning her imagination with additional features such as long hair and breasts for Iam who is a hyper-realistic version of younger Stuart.

What is it that she wants? To what extent have those sentiments, which later became biases, been shaped by society or resided naturally within? These are interesting questions — ill-formed concerns with the impact of AI on society — still, such conflicts would be better expressed through human actors under real circumstances (as opposed to the flat, set in the film’s overly long middle, predatory dolls of the most basic kind). From this needless high-concept standpoint, the Zucheros seem to have taken the most roundabout way to get to the simplest boy-meets-girl premise.

There is also a problem with the basic premise: as the two robots perform “Date Night 2.0” hundreds of thousands of times to perfect it, why is this the most relevant depiction of romance? And if so, why would robots who should be the most logical of beings, look for a romance at all? Unless of course, one gives two SMART devices some brains, and a billion years, in which case they wouldn’t stick around with such an archaic concept of binding relationships. Perhaps it is actually the other way around. May be the more advanced aliens could come to earth and show us what real relationships mean.

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