Spike Jonze’s I’m Here, a short film making its online debut after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is surprisingly unbeholden to its sponsor Absolut. None of the glamourous trappings you’d expect from a vodka partnership truly permeate this 30 minute robot romance, which has the same hipster feel that’s permeated much of Jonze’s work since his early days as a director of music videos.
It’s hard to say whether or not I’m Here is well-acted, since leads Andrew Garfield and Sienna Guillory are playing automatons (apparently British ones) and are thus both encased in plastic shells, leaving them acting with just movement and voice. But the simple, elegant visual storytelling Jonze employs here does most of the work, and the result is surprisingly affecting. albeit in a potentially dark way. For the twists that come as Sheldon (Garfield) sacrifices for Francesca (Guillory) could easily be construed as a commentary on how destructive and all-consuming love can be. But if you’re a romantic, you might simply see this story as an expression of the purest love imaginable. Either way you feel, the film is much more than a treatise on shoddy robot construction.
Jonze’s eye for Los Angeles hasn’t changed too much since his Beastie Boys days, using East LA locations with a guerrilla feel (though my guess would be that some of that Absolut money helped them get location permits). This time around, though, Los Angeles is beautiful, thanks to director of photography Adam Kimmel’s stunning visuals, which the minimalist custom video player does a nice job of showcasing. A warning: Don’t click on the button in the top lefthand corner of the screen if you don’t want to be kicked out of the theater and sent back to the lobby. Kinda wish that had been labeled.
The entire I’m Here experience is geared towards recreating the theatrical one, including the click-based interface that walks you into the theater, to the ticket booth, and then to your seat, not to mention the fact that they’re limiting “ticket supply.” Only 12,000 viewers a day are able to access the film, and in the hour and a half I spent working on this review, the number of seats available fluctuated from 3,000 to 300 to 1,000 — confusing, but enough to indicate some scarcity in play.
My one tip is this: Don’t bother with the Facebook interactivity. I connected my account to the film’s site and was able to invite a friend to watch with me via a wall posting. But there was nothing like the Facebook chat seen during Obama’s inauguration and other events, which is what I’d been anticipating — instead, it was a way of using a viewer’s Facebook account to promote the film, which left me feeling used. And just like in the offline world, it sucks when something you liked makes you feel that way.
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