Her (2013) | ★★★★

Took every megabyte of my breath away

Director Spike Jonze has taken the simple notion of a man falling in love with a computer and wrapped it beautifully this complex, intricate and charming story. It is a story that portrays a not-so-distant future where technology has advanced so far that computers now have an intuition and actually develop a personality based on their interactions and experiences.

So, take this notion and combine it with a man(Theodore; played by Joaquin Phoenix) who has just split from his wife, childhood sweetheart nonetheless, and needs some form of connection and companionship to bring his life back to order. This companionship comes in the shape of Samantha, a brand new computer operating system (O.S.).

Theodore is hesitant at first but soon realises that Samantha is much more than just an operating system and quickly becomes rather attached to his new friend. Samantha has a fresh and excited outlook on life, and through her eyes Theodore becomes much happier and positive as a person. This relationship soon develops and becomes much more, there are questions to be answered and in some cases they may not find the answer they are looking for. Is it really possible to be in love with an OS?

There are a few other little sub-plots in the story, one of my favourite little bits being Theodore's career. He works for 'hand-written-romantic-letters.com' *or something like that) who provide a service for loved ones to send letters to their darlings without having to actually write it. Not exactly a nice thought, that a service like that would be so in demand that it made a profitable business, but the silver lining is that Theodore's writing is absolutely sublime. The letters he writes are beautiful. I won't add in a spoiler here but this sub-plot has a sweet development later in the film that was a great little surprise, thanks for that one Spike Jonze.

This film makes you think, what is a 'normal' relationship anyway!? All we really need is to fill our lives with joy.

It's a medium-pace romantic film with a hint of sci-fi futuristicness. Defintiely watch it if that's the kind of mood you're in, it will not disappoint.

★★★★