Synopsis: Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy named Me and a satellite named Iam meet online and fall in love.

Love Me was personally one of the most coveted and most anticipated films for the online portion of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The duo of Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as the only two performances was actually really intriguing and the synopsis was highly ambiguous. This was a huge conceptual swing from both the writing and the overall filmmaking and this will probably end up being one of the most talked about films that comes out of the festival. For better or for worse. Spanning billions of years and in three different ‘forms’ this was a highly creative and inventive film.

This film lives and dies with its performances. If they weren’t good and didn’t fully commit, this film would have been more of a glorified immersive art exhibit than anything else. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun are both fantastic. Fully committing to these roles and making them very believable. Their dynamic is great and they both have moments to shine that leave an impact on the runtime. This project’s ambition needed performers who could transcend regular filmmaking, and this duo was perfect for the job. The performances are by far the biggest bright spot of this film.

As stated earlier, this will be one of the most talked about films of the year when it eventually comes out. There is a lot to interpret here and I think it could turn into a highly divisive conversation. From a conceptual standpoint, it’s very inventive and I fully bought into those ideas, but in the end, people will either love it or hate it. It’s a film that tackles humanity from an artificial lens and talks about social media, self-worth and how we view ourselves. These characters go through the human experience without actually being human. For the most part, it worked for me, but at some points, I was left feeling a little hollow. I think a lot of people will find this to be an empty look a humanity that isn’t saying anything that we haven’t heard before. 

FINAL: Love Me is one of the biggest swings that you will see this year in terms of both narrative and technical filmmaking. The performances from Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun are the backbone of this rather empty story about humanity. It will end up being one of the more divisive films of the festival, but in the end most of what they were trying to do worked for me. I would recommend everyone give it a try purely for the big swings this project takes.

Point Breakdown:

15 for Writing: 11

15 for Performances: 13

10 for Entertainment: 7

10 for Direction: 8

10 for Emotions: 7

5 for Cinematography: 4

5 for Score: 3

5 for Pacing: 4

15 for Technical: 14

5 for Rewatchability: 4

5 for Automatic: 5

Love Me: 80/100

Jack Lautaret is a film critic, host of the Jack Lautaret YouTube channel and writer for Music City Drive-In. He is a member of the Online Film and Television Association. Twitter: @JackLautaret