The Art of Love

Director: Philippe Weibel (Switzerland, GB). Year of Release: 2022

London. Alongside the statutory red buses and shots of Tower Bridge, a woman in pink dungarees is driving a pink van to deliver cardboard boxes stuck together with pink tape. One of her deliveries is to Eva, a woman in her fifties, who hides the package on a high shelf in the kitchen. We gradually learn that the boxes are full of sex aids, and Eva is one of the most successful testers for The Art of Love PLC, who use the text of her assessments as advertising copy.

Also London, a man is lifting weights in the gym. Adam Kowinski is tall, muscled, tattooed. He is an influencer who has the seven figure number of people following him on a permanently updating electronic scoreboard on his wall at home. Adam is also an Art of Love tester – indeed one of their products is based on the exact dimensions of his penis. His testing appears to be more hands on that Eva’s – we watch him insert himself into a toy which sucks him off.

Eva and Adam attend an awards ceremony addressed by the sleazy company boss Hector – a Danny de Vito alike. Hector is a short man who wears Cuban heels, a white suit and a ridiculous moustache. To no-one’s surprize at all, Hector presents the main award to Adam, the face of the company. More surprizingly, he gives a second award to Eva, who is hiding unknown in the crowd until a spotlight picks her out.

Hector then declares that Adam and Eva will be testing the company’s new product – an AI-based device which enables lonely individuals to imagine a meaningful relationship with someone who (a) loves them, and (b) dresses up as a sexy physiotherapist / copper / nanny (delete according to preference). Adam and Eva have not met until now and – surprize, surprize – hate each other instantly. She is too dowdy for him, and he is too superficial for her.

If you’re surprized by Adam and Eva’s mutual dislike, your mind is going to be blown by what we learn next. Despite his millions of followers, Adam doesn’t have any friends. He spends his evening sitting alone at home. Not that he isn’t sensitive though. He watches figure skating on the telly, and has a load of jazz records (LPs, natch), although he rarely plays them. Somewhere in there there is a sensitive soul, waiting for the right people to make him bloom.

Similarly, although Eva writes eloquently about the sex toys, she has never used one herself – heaven forfend. And she is trapped in a loveless marriage to Ben, a man who used to write her little puzzles and leave them on her pillow, but now falls asleep in front of the footie while Eva cooks and cleans his dishes. He refuses to go away with her on holiday, as it will interrupt his homeopathic medical routine.

Ben has not taken any time off work for 4 years, and apparently works for a company which refuses statutory leave. And if he did take time off, he wouldn’t have the money to afford a holiday. Which makes you wonder why Eva is holding down 2 jobs – both working on the tube and testing sex toys. At different times, we learn that the sex toy work is lucrative and can barely pay for one holiday, symptomatic of the lazy writing we also experience elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Hector has a sumptuous apartment which he shares with his partner – a woman who, like Captain Manwairing’s wife, we only hear but never see. This is until the Great Reveal, which is so mind-bendingly predictable that it would barely be a plot spoiler to mention it here. Throughout The Art of Love, if you have a feeling that you know what’s about to happen, you will almost always be right – unless you overthink things and expect anything with any degree of subtlety.

Adam’s life is interrupted by a neighbour Claire, who keeps appearing on his balcony to ask him to move her bath or to ask for dental floss (of course). Although they live in expensive flats, apparently they have to share a balcony. Claire is pretty and sensitive – she writes poetry and invites Adam to come over and hear her perform. He is smitten, but unable to articulate his feelings. If anyone could articulate their feelings, this would be a much shorter film.

While Adam is pining for Claire, he and Eva develop a platonic relationship which is the complete opposite to her experiences with her deadbeat husband. Because, while Eva and Ben barely talk any more, her time with Adam is spent – well, mainly by getting on his motorbike and going to Dover, or having a chat in his flat which is almost always disrupted by one of them taking the hump, storming out, and going to the neighbouring pub. Maybe its not so different after all.

The Art of Love does, at least have a pop at the way in which commercialisation is destroying intimacy, but does so with such broad brush strokes that any intended satire is ineffective. The factory consists of people in white coats with bunsen burners and pipettes who stand on a sort of production line and cheer to the rafters when Hector reads them inspirational poems. Rather than satirising capitalism it builds an alternate – and unbelieveable – reality.

There are a number of clumsy editorial shortcuts. Claire invites Adam to an amateur poetry night where she’s appearing along side a number of other artists. He spontaneously decides to go, and arrives just as Claire is about to perform. Directly after her poem, the compere announces a drinks break. None of this is impossible, but it is a little convenient. It is as if the script were written on the back of a cigarette packet and the writers expect us to do all the heavy lifting.

The Art of Love is trying to confront serious issues, but does this somewhat ineptly. It is a comedy about existential dread, which is neither funny nor profound enough to address such subject matter. There is something in here, as there is something both comical and tragic about the emotionless way in which the sex industry preys on people’s loneliness, but this requires a sensitivity and sense of humour which are sadly missing here.