Romantic Film review - Her

So if I told you a man I knew had fallen in love with his computer, you would say that was batty right?
But, what if I told you a man fell in love with someone on facebook, whom he had never met and who, he felt so connected to, he'd rather commit to her on line than be single, even though he had never slept with her - or even kissed her.
Suddenly the story sounds really familiar, and something not too far away from what we know is possible in this day and age.
Enter the world of Her, the film where a man falls in love with is operating system.

Her isn't nearly as silly as it sounds, and in fact ends up being quite an interesting meditation on the complicated alienation one feels in life and even in relationship. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix - am I the only one who thinks he is gorgeous?) is a lonely man who works as a writer compiling heartfelt letters to loved ones for those incapable or unwilling to write the letter themselves. He is good at his job because he is able to immerse himself in the emotional shoes of the people he writes for. In some cases, he has been writing the love letters between two people for their entire married life.

Theodore is unhappy about his impending divorce from his wife Catherine (Roony Mara) a woman who accused him of being cold and never really letting her get close to him. To cheer himself up, he buys an operating system for his computer that is designed to grow and evolve as it works. When he sets it up, he names it Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) and soon the operating system starts to evolve as a female perfectly matched to him on the sole basis of the way he answers the question "Do you like your mother?" Soon, Samantha and Theo discover that they are attracted to each other and start to fall in love. Initially Theo responds with the cool distance Catherine accused him of, but soon he finds that he feels more comfort in relationship with an OS, possibly because it embraces the distance he needs for his safe sort of intimacy.

Her is an interesting sort of love story, but if your partner keeps complaining about the endless DVD's of Titanic, Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle, then this may be the quirky sort of love story that keeps a couple in perfect harmony through the night.