Fingernails opens in select theaters and premieres on Apple TV+ November 3. This review is based on a screening at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.
Christos Nikou is one of many filmmakers who faced the unfortunate challenge of releasing their feature debut during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with his beautifully contemplative Apples making the rounds at festivals in the latter half of 2020. A prescient lo-fi sci-fi film about a post-pandemic world in which loners are recruited to a program that helps them build new identities, Apples received some praise but struggled to gather the attention it deserved at a time when cinemas were shut and people weren’t particularly drawn to fictional stories that resembled the very real crisis that plagued their every waking moment.
Undaunted, the Greek director returns to a similar aesthetic, tone, and setting for his sophomore feature, Fingernails. The premise is simple: What if there was a scientifically tested way to know your partner is in love with you, and vice versa? In practice, however, things are much, much murkier. The compatibility test in this near-future reality consists of removing one fingernail from each partner and placing them alongside one another in a machine capable of measuring whether or not feelings are mutual – the results can be 0%, meaning there is no love shared at all; 100%, meaning both partners are in love; and a heart-shattering 50% result, in which only one partner is in love, but there is no clarity on who.
Schoolteacher Anna (Jessie Buckley) is one of the lucky people to score a 100% result – with her partner Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) – but the steady rhythms of their routine lead her to doubt a love that has been tested and proven. Restless, she takes a job at the institute that administers the test in the hopes of getting a better understanding of how it all works. While the walls of the office are plastered with signs about the near-eradication of divorce and how science stands for certainty, Anna feels everything but. This confusion will only grow stronger once she meets her professional partner and mentor, Amir (Riz Ahmed).
The duo is instantly drawn to one another. Together, they perfect the series of compatibility tests that precede the bodily mutilation, a task that requires not only a deep empathy for others but also a capacity for dialogue that normally comes with intimacy. In this, they work as a carefully lubricated seesaw, laughing at throwaway quips that quickly evolve into inside jokes and spending their days discussing not only their subjects’ lives but their own. As time goes by, Anna begins to cherish the afternoons at work with Amir more than the evenings at home with Ryan – the gap that instigated her career change widening instead of closing.
Fingernails taps into the striking stylistic traits of the so-called Greek Weird Wave (one of the catalysts of which, 2009’s Dogtooth, marked Nikou’s first major credit) and its provocative fables of modern-day alienation. It is precisely this muted, at times eerie, sense of detachment that emphasizes the film’s main triumph: a firm grasp on the differences between passion and love. By having science certify love as an unchangeable, permanent feeling, this reality almost eliminates the idea of passion – dedicating any time to nurturing excitement in the hopes of turning it into love is a useless exercise in a world where testing emotional compatibility takes less time than cooking noodles in a microwave. Sure, this equation prevents the strain of countless fights and the pain of a breakup, but it also eliminates the great joys of a shared life, especially in those early chapters when the thrill of having met someone special can make one feel invincible.
Passion, in Fingernails, lives in restrained displays of such joy, beautifully communicated by Buckley and Ahmed. It lies in the jolt of electricity that comes with an unexpected touch, timid smiles, a longing glance. Passion is also freer in youth, at that precious time of early adulthood before dreams are crushed under realistic cynicism. It is no coincidence Anna is drawn to two young subjects, Sally (Amanda Arcuri) and Rob (Christian Meer), while becoming infatuated with Amir. In the loving couple, she sees the signs of passion that this new society has managed to shove under a rug of hard facts. It is intoxicating to Anna to watch a blindfolded Rob find his beloved Sally based only on scent, a scene that plays like a ballet. The art form stands as a fitting metaphor for the dichotomy at the heart of Fingernails, a careful balance of precision and passion, one impossible to achieve without the other.
Nikou succeeds in capturing the lulling, almost magical, qualities of those early days of falling in love while never neglecting the chilling nature of Fingernails’ central concept. The musical score all but disappears during the test’s most grisly stage, the sound of hard protein being torn from skin as gruelling as one imagines. Such a skin-tingling physical pain would frighten someone whose life knows very little discomfort, but it fails to scare those in agonizing emotional pain – in this case, the body-horror ritual is nothing but an uncomfortable step towards a much greater payoff. It can be cathartic, even, to know the tortuous anxiety that comes with the test lies in pluckable, somewhat dispensable body parts.
Production designer Zazu Myers and art director Mathew Birtch create a world that clashes with futuristic ideas of dystopia. Houses are covered with bold print wallpapers and furnished with wooden everything, photographs of successful couples are taken on an analogue camera, and the love test machine itself is a glorious retro gadget equipped with a ’70s television set. This playfulness with – and suspension of – time, only aids Nikou’s portrayal of a reality that feels frighteningly closer to today than tomorrow. Not as much a cautionary tale, but a fondly conceived ode to the kind of love that refuses to forgo the unpredictable, messy, wonderful woes of passion.
