“Fingernails”, which was released on Apple TV+ on last Friday, starts with an intriguing story promise. What if being truly in love can be actually measured? What if the result of such a measurement is different form what one is feeling right now? Although exploring these and other story potentials for a while, the movie unfortunately straddles on without any clear direction before arriving at its fizzling anti-climactic ending, and that is a shame considering the solid efforts from its main cast members.

At first, the movie gradually establishes its supposedly futuristic setting, though nothing looks so fancy or cool in its mundane background. In this world, a machine which can actually test true love was developed a few years ago, and this has certainly affected numerous relationships out there. If the result is zero negative instead of being somewhere between 50 and 100%, that means the couple in question is not really in love with each other at all, and it is mentioned later in the story that more than 80% of the test results during the first several years showed negative (Imagine how many hearts were broken as a consequence).

Of course, there has also been the need for “strengthening” the test result, so there are a number of institutes for helping the couples in need. As shown in the film, the couples in need will go through a series of sessions for increasing the intimacy and affection in their relationship, and it seems this mostly works although it does not always guarantee the positive test result.

Anyway, Anna (Jessie Buckley) gets interested in being hired in one of such institutes mainly because she has not exactly been sure about whether she is really in love with her boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). They already tested themselves before, and the result was pretty positive to say the least, but Anna cannot help but feel like being less in love with him than before. Sure, they have lived together as being comfortable with each other’s presence, but it seems to her that something has been gone missing between them, and that is why she wants to know more about how true love can be measured.

After meeting the supervisor of the institute, Anna is assigned with Amir (Riz Ahmed), a more experienced employee who actually devised several sessions for those couples coming to the institute. In case of one of those sessions, they will be placed in a movie theater, and then their love will be tested via a sudden emergency. After all, one is surely ready to sacrifice oneself for the other if one is truly in love with the other, right?

And we get to know about how true love is confirmed by that machine in the end. All a couple to be tested has to do is getting one of their respective fingernails to be pulled out as a sample to be tested, and that will surely make you wince even though the movie thankfully does not show much of this unpleasant process. Now I wonder whether anesthesia can be an option, but I guess that probably interferes with the measurement.

Stoically sticking to its dry and detached tone, the screenplay by director/co-producer Christos Nikou and his co-writers Sam Steiner and Stavros Raptis doles out one small absurd moment to another as Anna and Amir work on a bunch of new couples to be tested. At one point, the relationship strength of a couple is tested via one trying to locate the other only via the sense of smell, and it looks like this actually strengthen the trust and affection in their relationship, though they eventually become quite nervous just like any other couple when the time for their test comes.

Meanwhile, Anna finds herself gradually attracted to Amir. Although Amir seems to be happy and confident with some other woman, Anna’s eyes still cannot help but drawn more to him, and she begins to have more doubt on her current relationship with Ryan. After all, she did not tell him much about her new job from the beginning, and she becomes more aware of the emotional gap between them. As a matter of fact, they look more like roommates instead of lovers, no matter how much they are nice and affectionate to each other.

Of course, things become more complicated when it seems that Amir also has some feelings toward Anna, but the movie merely hangs on their romantic potential without much interest, and we become more aware of its rather thin narrative and shallow characterization. Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed are engaging as their characters tentatively revolve around each other with more mutual feelings, but the movie often hesitates to move them forward for more emotion and drama, and Buckley and Ahmed’s good performances are mostly under-utilized despite their solid low-key chemistry. In case of Jeremy Allen White and Luke Wilson, they are unfortunately limited by their thankless supporting roles, and White, who has been more prominent thanks to the acclaimed TV comedy series “The Bear”, is particularly wasted without having many things to do.

On the whole, “Fingernails” is often disappointing for not pushing its compelling story ideas enough, and we can only appreciate how much its talented main cast members try to make it work as much as possible. Compared to Nikou’s promising debut feature film “Apples” (2020), this is a major letdown, and I can only hope that he will soon move onto better things.