Zoe (2018)

Film review #636

Director: Drake Doremus

SYNOPSIS: In the near-future, a company is developing robots that serve as companions to humans, and also a surefire compatibility test to see whether people are made for each other or not. Zoe, who works at the company, takes the test to see whether she is compatible with her co-worker Cole, with whom she scores 0%. It turns out that Zoe is actually an android herself, but can love still bloom between her and Cole?

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Zoe is a 2018 sci-fi romance film. A company in the near future is developing new frontiers in romance: human-like androids that can serve as companions, a drug that makes people feel like they’re in love temporarily for the first time, and a compatibility test that determines people’s romantic suitability for one another. Zoe, an employee of the company, runs a compatibility test on herself and another employee Cole, and it turns out to be 0%. She then learns from Cole that she is, in fact, an android, so will always score 0% with anyone. regardless, she starts a romantic relationship with Cole, and tries to make it work. The film takes on the typical and well-worn ideas of whether androids can love and such without much fanfare or a unique take on it. Combined with the aforementioned elements of the love drug and relationship compatibility test, you’ve got a blender of concepts that overlap with each other, and also fail to establish any depth to them as the backbone of the film. Zoe’s learning that she is an android provides a quite underwhelming response from her, and is not the interesting twist it could have been: it feels like the film just needed to get it out of the way so it could move on to the romance element, which actually does serve as the film’s spine. her insistence that robots can’t love because it’s all “zeroes and ones” is certainly challenged when she makes the discovery about herself, but again, it is lost beneath a heap of thing things.

The romance, again, is a bit muddled and doesn’t really offer anything significant or unique. One of the biggest problems I had was that Cole just isn’t a likable character, and is pretty awful really. The film does try to frame this as love being difficult and messy, but it reflects more on the messiness of the film rather than the characters, as there’s just not an intensity on screen between the actors, as every scene is mostly just hushed dialogue that fails to convey what it wants. There’s definitely some good ideas in here that could have been developed more roundly, but as they are, they fall flat. The ending offers an interesting twist, with it being left open whether the Zoe that Cole reunites with is the “real” Zoe or another android simply programmed to be her, but it’s delivered in such a slight manner that it doesn’t give space to interpret the significance of it. Overall, I can’t have too much good to say about Zoe: there’s too many different angles with too depth in the ideas department, the romance lacks the emotional impact, and it just never really hooked me at any point.