“Monsters”

In The Shape of Water, Elisa and Amphibian Man fall in love when Elisa works as a cleaner in a secret government facility. Neither can talk – Elisa due to a childhood accident and Amphibian Man either because of biology or language but they manage to communicate through sign language and music. TSoW is framed very much as a fairy tale, with a narrator talking about a Monster, of course, this Monster is not Amphibian Man but Michael Shannon’s sinister government agent.

Clearly, an area Guillermo Del Toro was interested in before TSoW he made two Hellboy films. In these films, Hellboy, a half-demon brought into our world by Nazi occultists trying to bring in some supernatural reinforcements, essentially becomes a superhero. In the films he is in love with Liz Sherman, a human with superpowers who sometimes works in the same evil-fighting organisation. An interesting aspect of their on-again-off-again relationship is that Liz can create fire, the problem being she isn’t always able to control it, but Hellboy is sort of from hell, fire isn’t going to hurt him.

Zombies

There’s a surprising number of films and tv show depictions of romantic relationships between zombies and non-zombies. Warm Bodies saw Teresa Palmer’s Julie fall in love with Nicholas Hoult’s R. R develops some feelings for Julie after eating the brain of someone she knew and this sort of awakens a human part of him. The zombies in Warm Bodies do cling to semblances of humanity and human behaviour – R’s love of music, especially on vinyl – yes, he is a hipster zombie.

In Life After Beth, Zach is devastated when his girlfriend Beth dies and so is very happy when she comes back to life until it becomes clear just how dead she still is. And not only dead but violent, even murderous. There is The Santa Clarita Diet where even after turning into a zombie the marriage between the two main characters carries on very happily, or Pushing Daisies, the main character can bring people back to life with a touch and undoes it with another touch, he falls in love with someone he brings back meaning they can never touch.

AI/Computers

Spike Jonze’s Her has a relationship between Joaquin Phoenix’s unhappy Theodore and his AI personal assistant Scarlett Johansson’s Samantha. Not only is Samantha not human she doesn’t have a body, existing simply as a computer programme. The film could be seen as a sci-fi rom-com and what is perhaps most interesting is that it follows more of the sci-fi route. For a start, it is not only Theodore who ends up in a relationship with their AI, many people do, sometimes as genuine friends or romantic partners. It is not just the story of two individuals finding love in atypical circumstances but a fundamental change in human society, or as it probably should be called human-AI society. The ending especially follows through on this- in rom-coms usually the people end up together, sometimes they break up, or sometimes one person can die. Her does perhaps what no other rom-com has ever done in that the various AIs start talking and the exponential brain power of them working together yields amazing results. So amazing that the AI collectively travel to some other plane of existence, leaving behind their human friends and partners.

Westworld, Ex Machina, Blade Runner and more all feature relationships between humans and AI/robot partners. The Star Wars film Solo has a relationship between Lando Calrissian and L3. Futurama has human-robot relationships in various forms – from Fry dating a robot with an illegally downloaded personality of Lucy Liu to Bender and Amy and who knows what Hedonismbot is getting up to. Perhaps the most fun is the relationship between Bender, a robot, and Planet Express Ship, a spaceship.

Vampires

Humans and vampires having romantic relationships goes back a long way in vampiric fiction. Of course relatively recently we had the Twilight series of films – where teenage Bella falls in love with teenage-looking but much older vampire Edward. To establish good value for money the series also contains human-werewolf relationships. I have never seen the Twilight movies apart from seeing the end of the last film on a train in Spain whilst listening to music, which I think is actually how the director prefers people to watch it. I have however seen the tragically beautiful Let The Right One In and the sad relationship between two children; the human Oskar and vampiric Eli and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night the Iranian black and white vampire neo-western, which show the difficulties of relationships with somehow who comprehends the world – and the people in it – in a completely different way.

And of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has human-vampire relationship, human-werewolf, human-robot, human-demon, human-preying mantis, and even a human-demon/computer/robot relationship and so would deservedly take the title.

Also Read: Rom-coms: The Unlikely Benchmarks of Feminist Progression

The post Monsters, Machines, and Mayhem: Exploring Unconventional Romance in Films appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

The Plot and Characters

You have to admit that the premise is fun. You can almost imagine Litwak in a writer’s room saying, “What if we did When Harry Met Sally, but in space?”. The story is set in a universe with multiple alien species and gods living together across planets and dimensions. Molli (Zosia Mamet) is an old-fashioned romantic, except she’s interested in space magic (literal space magic, not your regular horoscopes and crystals). Max (Aristotle Athari) dreams of being a “mega mech fighter” who builds and battles in giant robots, basically the future version of a sporty tech bro.

They meet when Molli crashes into Max while out driving her spaceship, and gets roped into giving him a ride. The two quickly become friends with a bond that yo-yos back and forth over the years. The leads had good chemistry, and there were convincing performances from Zosia Mamet and supporting actor Arturo Castro, who played Walter.

Political Satire

One aspect of the storyline that brought it to modern times was the impending sense of doom, especially in the second act. In 2023, we are all too familiar with the anxiety of living in a world ravaged by the climate crisis, insane politics and war, something which Molli and Max in the Future depicted in thinly veiled satire. I deeply appreciate the angle of people trying to approach love and relationships in a world that is falling apart. Most traditional rom-coms approach life with a sense of optimism that is simply impossibly unrealistic in this day and age. Strangely, the whole world-ending aspect being portrayed in this way is actually refreshing. However, it was introduced joltingly in the second act of the film. The execution of the secondary plot is not as seamless as it could have been.

The Visuals

The film’s visual aesthetic involved a lot of dark night skies lit up with neon lights and distant galaxies. Despite the sci-fi visuals, don’t walk into this film expecting shiny Marvel-esque CGI. Though there are some modern-day special effects, the film mostly relies on practical effects and heavy use of green screens. While this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, the result is the cosy vibe of 20th-century lo-fi science fiction. I especially appreciated the wardrobe which embodied that era of science fiction. It was essentially what someone in 1960 would think people in the future would dress like.

The Comedy

Perhaps the biggest success of this film was that it was actually funny. Most romantic comedies are very heavy on the romance and too light on the comedy. Molli and Max in the Future had plenty of dry jokes that qualified as real humour, and they deserve their props for that. It was nice to see a rom-com that relied on more than cheap clichés and slapstick humour.

In the Broad Sense

The storyline manages to hit all the points that rom-com fans know and love; slow-burn romance, dramatic splits after arguments, a yearning for a greater purpose. However, it doesn’t do much beyond that. Despite the effort put into world-building, special effects, futuristic wardrobes, and political satire, the storyline would hardly been any different if it happened in New York City like When Harry Met Sally did. The film’s setting and premise provided a great set-up to make it something much more, and yet it wasn’t. Though it isn’t necessarily barrier-breaking, it is a unique film and worth a watch. This is a great film if you want some cosy romance with modern sentiments and a side of old-school sci-fi.

Rating: (3 / 5)

Also Read: Rom-Coms: The Unlikely Benchmarks of Feminist Progression

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The post Love in Space: A Review of ‘Molli and Max in the Future’ [BFI London Film Festival] appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Big Picture Film Club is back! Our next event, Love & The Abstract, is an exploration of relationships, love, and the difficulties they have to overcome. We have curated a list of 5 short films, from an array of talented filmmakers, each tackling a unique perspective on love and relationships. Check out our film list below:

Signs Of Silence (Director, R.M. Moses) – Born into a world of silence, Eli finds himself not able to communicate well with people. Mainly because not everyone understands sign language. This has impacted his self-esteem and confidence. This is Eli’s story of how difficult life can be when you aren’t being heard.

Anchor (Director, Dan Horrigan) – Devotion is an exploration of grief, and love gone dark. It’s a story about the human shadow, how it can overwhelm us if we don’t learn to live with it.

Love Me Tinder (Director, Sami Abusamra) – Love Me Tinder is a dark comedy about an encounter between two lonely strangers. A man spends an awkward evening with an older woman after they match on a dating app. Meeting each other is easy, but as their night progresses connecting proves to be much more difficult.

Populace (Director, Dan Horrigan) – Set in 2097 it follows a day in the life of John, a clone who works for the Tyrannical, Orwellian “Populace” corporation. His world is turned upside down when he is forced to choose between the woman he loves and the reason he was created.

Tickets: http://loveandtheabstract.eventbrite.co.uk

Click here for the Facebook Event Link.

The post Big Picture Film Club Presents: Love & The Abstract appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.