Romance in need of human contact

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2014)

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is divorcing his wife Catherine Klausen (Rooney Mara) and drifting into a lonely existence. He's a letter writer and his most important relationship is to technology. Then he takes up an offer for the new OS1. It gave herself the name Samantha (Scarlett Johansson). Samantha seems more than a program and he finds himself falling for her more than any real human being.
One thing is certain. Spike Jonze is an original. Scarlett plays Samantha like a real human being. I like the concept but I'm not sure if it's as good of a movie as everybody is saying. There is something about a real relationship that works best with human contact. Even a long distance relationship has two physical persons on the screen. The lack of a human body really holds it back although that's the point. She is a fantasy like a 1-900 number. It's just a very sophisticated version. It tries to get weird with a third person. However it could never be weird enough. I'm reminded of Cronenberg's Videodrome where James Woods dive into kissing the TV. It never goes that far. It approaches going for the next level but the movie fizzles out. It takes a weak way to wrap things up. In the end, Theodore is let off the hook. He doesn't have to be proactive and the story resolves itself.