Yahoo News “Fingernails” trailer with Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White makes love a science
How do you measure love? Is it in the heart? The chemicals in the brain? What if you could quantify romance with a scientific test — a simple procedure that could definitively answer whether you and your partner are truly in love? Director Christos Nikou raises that question with Fingernails, a tender sci-fi romance.
In the film, scientists have developed a test to help couples learn whether they are actually in love. All it takes is a single fingernail from each partner, ripped out of the nail bed and popped into a microwave-like machine. After just a few minutes, the device spits out an analysis, declaring whether a relationship is built to last — or doomed to fail.
EW has the exclusive first trailer for Fingernails, which premiered this summer at the Telluride Film Festival. (The film will open in theaters Oct. 27, before streaming Nov. 3 on Apple TV+.) Jessie Buckley stars as Anna, an unemployed teacher who's in a longterm relationship with boyfriend Ryan (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White). They themselves took the test years ago, getting a positive result. But when Anna takes a job at the institute that administers the tests, she finds herself drawn to her coworker Amir (Riz Ahmed). Soon, she begins to wonder whether results can change over time — and whether romantic chemistry can sometimes defy science.
Greek filmmaker Nikou, known for directing 2020's Apples, makes his English language debut with Fingernails, and he tells EW that he's long been fascinated by the unknowable nature of love.
"The whole idea came when I, personally, was trying to think: What is love?" Nikou explains. "Then, of course, I was seeing people around me that were looking for love in a different way than I was thinking, whether it be by using dating apps, by using social media, or other things. But they were using their fingers to just swipe right and left in order to find love."
Courtesy of Apple Jeremy Allen White and Jessie Buckley in 'Fingernails'
When brainstorming ideas for his fictional love test, Nikou considered several scenarios, but he kept finding himself drawn to fingers. The director noticed that our digits have long been tied to romance, whether it's swiping on apps or the symbolism of wearing a wedding ring. There's even some scientific connection between fingernail health and heart health, as white spots on nails can, in rare cases, be a sign of heart disease.
"The nails are also something that protect our flesh," Nikou adds. "So, when you're losing them, you feel the pain, which is equal to the pain of love. But you're losing something that protects you, and you feel a little bit more vulnerable, like how you are when you are in love."
The concept of a scientific love test may sound like trippy sci-fi, but Nikou wanted the film itself to feel timeless, so there are no cell phones or 21st century technology. Even the test machine itself looks like a decidedly low-tech microwave, like it could have been invented decades ago.
"By keeping only the one technological device, the test machine, we tried to make all the rest a little bit more analogue and to not have digital technology or cellphones," Nikou explains. "[We wanted] the institute to also feel like maybe it's the '70s, '80s, or '90s — a little bit before the 2000s, when we started using more technology and the internet."
Despite the film's scientific concept, Nikou is less concerned with the tech and more with the humans on screen, raising thoughtful questions about attraction and commitment.
"Normally, the approach of conceptual stories like this is to create something futuristic, distant, or cold — or to create a whole new world and [only] care about that," he adds. "But for me, you have to just make it a character study, to show the whole world through these characters. My approach is to try to create something that is not provocative or pretentious, but something that is tender, romantic, warm, and grounded — because that's how I am as a person. Or I hope that I am."
Fingernails also stars Luke Wilson and Annie Murphy. Watch the trailer above.
Make sure to check out EW's Fall Movie Preview cover story on The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes — as well as all of our 2023 Fall TV Preview content, releasing through Sept. 29.
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