I’M YOUR MAN

Director: Maria Schrader

2021, Germany, 105, R

Screenwriter: Maria Schrader and Jan Schomburg, based on the short story of Emma Braslavsky.

Cast: Dan Stevens, Maren Eggert.

 

Maria Schrader’s new bittersweet romantic comedy is like an AI update of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo: If you could create your perfect android partner, would you do it? Alma (Maren Eggert, winner of Berlin Film Festival’s Best Actress Award) is a skeptical – and single – academic. When she takes on the scientific assignment of living for three weeks with an android (Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey), things go south fast: his romantic gestures of rose petals in the tub and cooking elaborate breakfasts are decidedly not for her. But as the android adapts to her personality and needs, Alma must ask herself if the perfect mate can be made to order. And perhaps more importantly, if falling in love can ever satisfy the human condition of loneliness.

“Slyly observant, if Jane Austen were alive and writing on a MacBook, she might come up with something like this.” – Ty Burr, Boston Globe.