Courtesy of Sundance Institute
If we’re being honest, the premise for Love Me—a strange, sentimental Sundance debut starring Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart—sounds a lot like Pixar’s Wall-E. A lonely robot falls in love with another robot after the collapse of human civilization? Gee, where have we heard that before?
Once Love Me gets going, however, its journey proves to be far more internal than the 2008 animated classic; while Wall-E follows its central robot across the universe, this feature debut from directors Sam and Andy Zuchero dives into the psyches of an insecure smart buoy (Stewart) and a happy-go-lucky satellite as they both try to figure out what makes a life. As the story progresses, this robotic romance becomes a parable about insecurities and how quickly they can doom a relationship.
After a quick, honestly unnecessary montage depicting the Earth’s genesis starting with the Big Bang, we open on Stewart’s buoy floating on the water for years and years of quiet solitude. Designed to monitor water temperature and other qualities, the buoy’s communication systems begin to deteriorate after years of abandonment. Then comes the satellite (Yeun), which mistakes the buoy for a lifeform before correcting its mistake and speeding away.