The Assessment
In the near future a couple undergoes an arduous trial in order to evaluate their suitability to be parents.
Home discomforts: Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen
Image courtesy of Amazon Media.
Fleur Fortuné’s The Assessment is set in a worryingly immediate future where a well-balanced couple, Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel), long for a child. She is an accomplished botanist, developing new sustainable strains of algae, fungi and plant life; he is a designer of tactile virtual reality software (with a view to conjuring up life-like pets out of mid-air). If anybody is suitable to become a mother and father, surely Mia and Aaryan are up to the task. However, due to failing resources and environmental breakdown, ‘the state’ is limiting the amount of childbirth in this forbidding new world.
In order to qualify for parenthood, Aaryan and Mia are to be subjected to a rigorous seven-day assessment in which their government-appointed inspector, Virginia (Alicia Vikander), insists on full access to all areas of their living quarters and a complete immersion in their lifestyle – for the whole week. After a humiliatingly intimate cross-examination, Virginia insists on the couple supplying specimens of their hair, blood, urine, saliva, sperm and vaginal mucus. Aaryan and Mia are determined to present a united front, but what they suspected would be an uncomfortable seven days turns into something far, far worse…
In many cases, science fiction is a useful medium in which to reflect our own concerns. Here, first-time director Fleur Fortuné specifically explores parenthood, and in the context of a contaminated world asks us what we would sacrifice for our offspring. How far would you go? A former art director in Paris, Fortuné is brave to cut her directorial teeth in such a crowded field (as the sci-fi thriller) and at first The Assessment does feel like it’s trudging in rather well-trodden terrain. But Fortuné brings a stylish intelligence to her canvas and has elicited first-rate performances from her three leads, in particular Olsen and Vikander. As the story proceeds, and the film gets past the gimmickry of this futuristic dystopia (a daily dosage of oxygenated ‘Senoxidine’, an unstable sky, the smart house with all its digital resources), the film goes from being a familiar thing to an uncomfortable drama and finally to a full-fledged thriller. Olsen just gets better and better (cf. HBO’s Love & Death) and Vikander steals the show as an official who mutates from impostor to surrogate child to tyrant in a game that doesn’t feel like a game.
From a script by Mr and Mrs Thomas (aka Dave Thomas and Nell Garfath-Cox) and John Donnelly, The Assessment twists the viewer into its web of complicity, amplifying the claustrophobia of state-imposed laws that we are already experiencing ‘in the real world’. And the writers nail the futurespeak to a T, as everything that unfolds is, apparently, “within the protocols.” So, not to put too fine a point on it, cherish the child you already have. If you have one.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander, Himesh Patel, Indira Varma, Nicholas Pinnock, Charlotte Ritchie, Leah Harvey, Minnie Driver, Anaya Thorley.
Dir Fleur Fortuné, Pro Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen, Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo, Shivani Rawat, Julie Goldstein and Grant S. Johnson, Ex Pro Allen Gilmer, Riki Rushing, William Shockley, Tom Brady, Connor Flanagan, Madeleine K. Rudin, William Bruce Johnson, Thomas K. Richards, Carlotta Löffelholz, Jonathan Saubach and Rusta Mizani, Screenplay Mr and Mrs Thomas (aka Dave Thomas and Nell Garfath-Cox) and John Donnelly, Ph Magnus Nordenhof Jønck, Pro Des Jan Houllevigue, Ed Yorgos Lamprinos, Music Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Costumes Sarah Blenkinsop, Sound Frank Kruse, Dialect coach Charlotte Fleck.
Number 9 Films/augenschein Filmproduktion/ShivHans Pictures/Project Infinity/Tiki Tane Pictures-Amazon Media.
114 mins. UK/USA/Germany. 2024. US Rel: 8 April 2025. UK Rel: 8 May 2025. Cert. 18.
