Spike Jonze’s love story Her and Alain Guiradie’s thriller Stranger by the Lake do not immediately suggest themselves as an obvious double-bill. But both effectively address the same subject: intimacy issues. Her is steeped in technology and set at some unspecified point in the future not so distant that we cannot see where it overlaps with our own world. The sight of an entire population walking around talking not to one another but to computer operating systems accessible via near-invisible earpieces is certainly approaching the realms of documentary realism. If you are still startled whenever you see lone figures ranting and gesticulating, and if you have to forcibly remind yourself that they are in all likelihood speaking into a hands-free mobile device, then Her will seem very much as though it is taking place in the streets where you live. Probably the most alien aspect of the film’s futuristic vision is to be found in the area of costume. The bad news is this: unflattering high-waisted slacks are in for men. It almost makes you pine for a dystopia.
The film stars Joaquin Phoenix at his least guarded as the professional letter-writer Theodore Twombly, who composes personal correspondence on behalf of others. At beautiful-handwritten-letters.com, he ventriloquises his clients’ private emotions, serving often for years on end as a romantic or familial go-between at one remove to people he has never met. Intimacy has become relative, long-distance and marketable. A stranger can articulate feelings that are beyond your grasp, while friends can be the virtual imps who populate your favourite interactive game. (Hardly an absurd idea in an age where a Facebook “friend” need not be anyone you have ever clapped eyes on.) It’s perfectly natural in this context that Theodore would fall in love with his computer operating system, a self-evolving entity (“voice” doesn’t really cover it) named Samantha, who is played, unseen, by Scarlett Johansson in one of the richest voice performances of recent years. No—one of the richest performances per se.
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