In Fingernails (2023), couples can “scientifically” determine whether they are in love by “testing” their nails. A mere nail trimming won’t do, however; it has to be the entire nail, ripped right off the nail bed — and why not? It’s no more arbitrary than any number of stupid things that people do to “prove” their love.
Anna (Jessie Buckley) has tested 100% positive twice with her current boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) and 50% once with co-worker Amir (Riz Ahmed). This ostensibly means that Amir is in love with Anna but Anna is not in love with him. However, she evidently likes Amir as more than just a friend, and her relationship with Ryan is well past the honeymoon phase. Anna asks Duncan (Luke Wilson), her boss and director of the “Love Institute,” if it’s possible to “have a positive result with two people at the same time?” Duncan dismisses the notion of polyamory out of hand: “It’d be like a six-months-pregnant woman suddenly becoming pregnant with another child. A biological impossibility.”
It’s not clear whether the test is supposed to be legit — which wouldn’t make it infallible; the possibility of false positives or negatives is not discussed, though, nor is the idea that the results could be knowingly or inadvertently manipulated — or simply a glorified compatibility quiz (the couples engage in a variety of arbitrary activities, such as “the underwater exercise,” prior to being tested). Either scenario could significantly impact Anna’s character arc, but I would have inclined towards the latter.
Duncan’s institute has all the trappings of a pseudoscientific scam, its nail test no less a fallacious swindle than Scientology’s auditing. Moreover, its hardline stance on lifelong monogamy (one of is mottos is “no more divorces”), and its “program” designed “to make the bond of love stronger” — which culminates in ‘graduating’ couples receiving an “In Love Certification” — are not a million miles removed from the mass weddings for which the Unification Church is infamous, wherein Reverend Moon himself would match the couples.
So, why not pull the trigger on the Love Institute as a full-on cult? The name alone echoes Nineteen Eighty-Four’s nefarious Ministry of Love. Then you could turn Anna’s experience into an eye-opening journey of self-discovery, in which she learns she’s not beholden to anyone and is free to choose by herself who she wants to be with — or, even better, that she doesn’t need to be with anybody.
As it is, Anna’s realization that “Sometimes being in love is lonelier than being alone” is a dead end because the movie doesn’t empower her to confront her autophobia. On the contrary, the script’s seeming solution to Anna’s problems is to have her go from one relationship to another, when what she could actually use is some me-time to learn to love herself.
The film as a whole doesn’t push itself, preferring to walk right down the middle of the road, wallowing in the bland mediocrity of a run-of-the-mill love triangle. Instead of churning out yet another insipid romance, Nikou would have done well to truly embrace the farcical and even surreal possibilities that the plot could have afforded him. Better an over-the-top comedy than an underwhelming drama.
Consider one of Duncan’s outlandish ideas, involving “a fake fire in a movie theater where the clients are gathered … to gauge their reaction and see just how protective they are of their other half.” The payoff to this setup is Anna and Amir lamenting later on that a “cinema owner got cold feet.” That’s it? Compare that to the constantly burning house in Synecdoche, New York and you’ll understand how Fingernails lacks the courage of its own cuckoo convictions.
Yet another viable avenue would have been to make Duncan, not a money-hungry L. Ron Hubbard-like Sven Gali, but a Wizard of Oz type. From that perspective, the nail test would nonetheless be a charade, with the nail-ripping part being the real test. Two characters already express in no uncertain terms their aversion to the denailing, but the film once again fails to pick up the ball and run with it. The way I see it, the willingness of lack thereof to undergo the proposed mutilation should be the test’s single decisive factor, with the added benefit of not having to actually part with any appendages either way.
As it turns out, we don’t know what happens when one half of a couple refuses to have their fingernail torn off, because that eventuality never arises. Neither does the film delve into the aftermath of an otherwise loving couple being told (and believing) that their union has no future based on nothing more than an argument from authority. All things considered, Fingernails is not one wasted opportunity, but many.
