'Fingernails' Review: Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed Can't Save Unbelievably Ridiculous Romantic Drama
Despite impassioned performances from Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed, Christos Nikou’s Fingernails can’t overcome shoddy trappings undermining its script at every corner.
This piece was published during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The conceit of Christos Nikou’s Fingernails seems interesting: a test to pinpoint if a couple is indeed (or not) in love by ripping their fingernails and examining them causes massive strife in society. Anna (Jessie Buckley) believes in the test that confirmed she was very much in love with her boyfriend, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). It’s part of the reason why she wants to work at the Love Institute and help founder Duncan (Luke Wilson) in his mission.
She is hired on the spot and is tasked to shadow Amir (Riz Ahmed), a newer instructor at the institute, but one who shows great promise. Initially, she doesn’t tell Ryan of her new job, pretending to work at an elementary school, because the test is divisive and makes him uncomfortable discussing it. During that time, however, she starts to have feelings for Amir, who appears himself as friendly and composed. He also likes Anna but doesn’t explicitly convey those feelings towards her.
It’s there that the movie becomes a blossoming romantic drama, while her status quo relationship with Ryan starts to peter out. Had it stayed in those conventional trappings, perhaps some would’ve called it uninspired and clichéd, but there’s an unbroken rule in most romantic films that clichés are good. Audiences want to watch something that is easily comfortable and can recognize its tropes because movies like these shouldn’t be too cerebral or open-ended. Celine Song’s Past Lives is a great example of this: its structure is inherently familiar and stays in a comfortable enough line to draw audiences in and craft its core character arcs, only for Song to break it slightly for its third act to feel like a gut-punch.
In Fingernails, Nikou wants to play with classic tropes in its first act and break every single one in its subsequent ones. While the ambition is certainly laudable, the end result sees a laughably ridiculous drama with characters who appear interesting but only end up as one-note clichés of their more compelling selves.
In its conventional first act, Nikou draws compelling promise of arcs through Anna, Ryan, and Amir. While Allen White’s character is the most underused of the bunch, he portrays each scene with a great sense of depth, teasing an actor who seems ready to give his all for the movie, only for the film itself to ignore him at every turn. It’s a shame because White deserves to star in high-profile films after his breakout stint in FX’s The Bear, even if he has been acting for much longer than the show’s premiere.
Fingernails is mostly about Buckley and Ahmed, whose relationship grows more intimate as the film progresses. Both characters are initially fascinating to watch. However, just like Anna and Ryan’s relationship, their arc starts to veer into ridiculously inert territory and never recovers once Nikou chooses one baffling screenwriting decision after the next instead of treading on familiar ground. Wanting to subvert expectations is always welcome, but it has to be done in a way that feels earned for the script to warrant it.
Unfortunately, Nikou never justifies his decisions as the movie progresses, leading to one of the most unintentionally hilarious climaxes that contradicts everything its rudimentary test and Love Institute have been saying about the topic of love all along. Perhaps that was the point, but the emotional catharsis with an ending like this should feel like a break in character, ultimately shifting its arc to unexpected territories. But it never feels as if you’re watching the protagonists naturally progress in their grounded environment that somehow has a splash of sci-fi in it. That conceit is great, and there’s so much Nikou can do with it to feel visually engrossing and thematically rich.
Marcell Rév’s cinematography is a highlight, but he can only do so much if everything around the film isn’t up to par. At least some of the needle drops are good, playing with French versions of classic romantic songs (because, as one character puts it, the language is the most erotic) instead of typical tunes we always hear in cinema. For example, Charles Trenet’s La Mer is played instead of Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea, and thank God for that.
But it still isn’t enough to save Fingernails from being anything more than a ridiculously undercooked romantic drama despite impassioned performances from its lead actors. If it wasn't for them, the film might have been a disaster, but they save it from fizzling out any further.