Let’s be honest, 2025 is a weird time to be a human being.Artificial intelligence is developingat an absurdly rapid pace and a big tech oligarchy has taken hold of power in ways that arguably go beyond the predictions of Orwell and Huxley. We are constantly being watched, studied, heard, tracked, monitored, and replicated not just by technology and the surrounding industry, but by developing AI and by one another. It is against this backdrop thatLove Mefilmmakers Andy and Sam Zuchero set their love story, one they themselves compared to the structure of classics likeHis Girl Friday. You know how it goes: Smart Buoy meets Satellite, Satellite uses search engine, Smart Bouy loses Instagram account…
Love Meis about aromance between robotsafter the extinction of humanity, but it’s also about learning. It’s as much a wake-up call about generations born, bred, and breeding through the digital landscape as it is an exploration of the difference between learning and understanding.It’s a movie that could be studied by screenwriters and psychologists as well as behavioral experts and programmers.
How ‘Love Me’ Combines Science-Fiction with Romantic Comedy
Love Me is a romantic drama film written and directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero. Set in a postapocalyptic scenario, the film follows two individuals who meet online and fall in love. However, the nature of their relationship and the world causes them to evaluate what is real - including themselves.
This movie is so simple (two performers, a few locations) and yet it touches on ideas as vast as the entire human experience. Why? Because the Smart Buoy (Kristen Stewart) and the Satellite (Steven Yeun) have to figure out how to be human in the first place, then how to be in love, and they do this using the knowledge we left them. They sift through our digital rubble looking for clues, answers, and, ultimately, any evidence of a meaningful existence.Love Meis a movie romance for our time, but it’s also a road map to get out of the very real, very dangerous places our time has taken so many of us.
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The lone Smart Buoy left behind on earth long after humanity has gone meets a roving lone Satellite that was launched as a kind of memory box of all that humanity was before it died out. The Satellite will only stop and talk with a life form, which sets Smart Buoy up to have to ‘pretend to be’ an attractive mate using what it/she can find on the internet. There is an immediate gender inequality presented in the early meeting and dynamic. The underpinning of the dynamic is a lie, which is often the great device at the core of any rom-com.
The dynamic develops as the two artificial intelligences play ‘their roles’ based on the influencer videos Smart Buoy discovered. This already perfectly mimics the nature of relationships even prior to the development of all our modern tech. There are socially defined roles and role models just as there are culturally (and politically) defined gender roles, and we watch them and imitate them in an endless generational loop, only sometimes stopping and wondering, “Is this me? Is this them? Is this real?”
And therein lies the strength ofLove Me, a story that connects to the eternal struggle between relationships and societal norms and identity. Eventually, after one thousand years of a date night routine they copied from Instagram influencers Deja and Liam, the Satellite and the Buoy struggle with what they are doing and eventually break up. It sends them both on a quest of deeper self-discovery that is packed with metaphors for what happens to people when they come apart and question what they are, why they are, and what they wish they were.
Why ‘Love Me’ Hits Hard Today
The generations raised in the explosion of social media suffered mightily, and the characters inLove Medemonstrate precisely why and how suicides among some groups skyrocketed to unseen proportions. It was developmental impostor syndrome on steroids. With every person perfectly ‘creating’ themselves in a readily available medium, the pressure to be something else that was actually unattainable went into overdrive. This has led to people struggling to connect to one another romantically and to themselves. What they were was simply not enough, and they could never be what seemed to be enough in the perfect snapshots and short reels.
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Love Me, the title itself, plays on that idea. “Me” is the name the Smart Buoy chooses for itself at some point, and the title is as much a question as it is a request. Can “Me” love itself? Can we truly love another being if we can’t find ways to love ourselves? Can we only love ourselves when we see others love us? These are questions that can actually lead to valuable introspection, better lives, and better relationships. For that alone,Love Megets high marks.
Strong Performances and a Second Act Sag
Stewart and Yeun carry this movie extremely well. The concepts are complex, the plot is simple, and it all rests on their shoulders. They have to pull off something akin to Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson’s relationship in Ingmar Bergman’s classicScenes from a Marriage, and they do. From being childlike, unknowing robots to being fully formed and feeling sentient beings looking for meaning and love, they do it all, and they do it pretty flawlessly. Scenes where they try and ‘taste’ water for the first time, or learn how to have sex while shifting genders and bodies as some unique form of experimentation — none of this is an easy ask for a performer. They do it all deftly, and in a relatable manner.
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The struggle for the film comes in the second act, when a great deal of time is passing. The characters are still digital avatars, or their original forms, and they are unsure of their future together. Despite the tight runtime, the movie sags here simply because the tension unwinds a bit and we, like the characters, aren’t clear about what’s next or where we are going. At this point in the story, some tension should’ve been introduced (or a new character or plot element), but there is no way to do that within the conceit ofLove Me. It may not bother all viewers, but it could be the kind of thing that holds some back from lovingLove Me.
Patience is a virtue though, and the film still clocks way below the bloated runtimes of today’s movie landscape, which is to its benefit. The messages and concepts presented inLove Meare critical to our day, and the execution provides laughter, insight, and maybe even tears.From Bleecker Street,Love Meis in theaters Jul 25, 2025.
