French filmmaker Fleur Fortuné has made an impressive, if flawed, feature debut whose somewhat troubled storyline is salvaged by three outstanding central performances. The Assessment opens with a young girl swimming a little too far out in the ocean, her distant, blurry mother calling her to shore. In a neat segue, when the girl comes up for air, she is now an adult. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen), still wearing the same style costume and still swimming a little too far from shore, is one half of a handsome and accomplished couple alongside Aaryan (Himesh Patel). They live in a gorgeous home and seem to want for nothing. Their clothes are all silks, linens and natural cotton, while their accessories and household furnishings are top of the range and in excellent taste. But when it’s revealed that the film is set in the near future in an arid land where food and resources are scarce, multiple questions immediately arise. If there is such scarcity that insects are a delicacy and nothing much appears to grow from the earth, how do these people have so much? Where do the resources for creating all their fabulous trappings of wealth come from?
Mia is a biologist and has an impressive greenhouse that is a testing ground for plant production. Aaryan is a developer who spends hours in a spooky darkroom full of volcanic sand, working on creating an artificial cat (there has been a pet cull and there’s now a call for AI pets). It’s not just pets that are missing: babies are no longer easy to come by either, though it is unclear why. Are the world’s inhabitants now sterile? The only way to get a baby is to apply for one, which is ‘grown in a bag’ using the couple’s genetic makeup. Before a baby can be manufactured, couples have to go through an assessment. This is when Virginia (Alicia Vikander) comes ringing at the door. And quite a few alarm bells start ringing too: her get-up has strong Nurse Ratched vibes and there is also something of Vikander’s robot from Ex Machina here. Is this woman even real? And if she is, is she unhinged? Either way, she is definitely malfunctioning. Her job is to live with Mia and Aaryan for a week to assess their fitness as potential parents.
Anyone who’s seen Mike Mills’ I Am Easy To Find short film (with music from The National’s eponymous album) will have seen Vikander portray a character growing up from birth through to adulthood. Vikander has time to delve into some of those ages here, focusing mainly on toddlerhood as she puts the would-be parents through exasperating and often terrifying scenarios – whether she’s chucking precious food around the kitchen or sulking or getting lost at the beach, she is transformed. It takes the couple a while to cotton on to what’s happening.
The odds are stacked against Mia and Aaryan from the start: is Virginia acting or has she discarded her role? Can they talk to her as an adult or always assume she is a child? Can their marriage withstand a week’s worth of toddler tantrums, predatory advances and mystifying behaviour? And can it survive the revelations and relived trauma revived by Virginia’s questioning and presence in their lives? This is where the film is at its strongest, with all three protagonists playing beautifully off one another. There is also a lot of humour amongst the bat-shit craziness and sinister undertones.
However, when more is revealed about the ‘old world’ and the reality of the new, the film – like the couple’s marriage – begins to flounder. Its strength lies in the central trio and the confined setting of the couple’s fabulous home and its environs (great work from production designer Jan Houllevigne). Perhaps, like her heroine, Fortuné has swum just a little too far out of her depth, but she has done so with fearlessness and intelligence and great wit.