Sci-fi meets love story in Spike Jonze’s Her

A FILM that deservedly made almost everyone’s list of last year’s best films was Spike Jonze’s Her.

Lea Seydoux in a scene from the film Farewell My Queen.

A FILM that deservedly made almost everyone’s list of last year’s best films was Spike Jonze’s Her (Friday, 12.05pm, Masterpiece).

A sensitive love story on one level and sci-fi on another, it tells the story of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a shy, soon-to-be divorced man. But when he downloads a new piece of software with artificial intelligence called Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), he finds the woman he has been looking for.

Smart, affectionate and always on; in many ways Samantha is the perfect partner (though some of their attempts at physical intimacy are by turns hilarious and sad). Inevitably, though, things get complicated when Samantha’s expanding consciousness takes her to places where Theodore can’t follow.

Unlike the dystopian type of science fiction — which envisages humans enslaved to artificial intelligence or robot armies — this film imagines much more prosaic and funny scenarios, and ultimately asks: what is authenticity in the digital age? (The contrast between this sensitively rendered film and Johansson’s other sci-fi outing last year in Luc Besson’s Lucy — an undergraduate train wreck — couldn’t be greater.)

A film that conversely received less credit than it deserved was Keanu Reeves’s directorial debut Man of Tai Chi (Wednesday, 10.25pm, Premiere). The general ignorance about tai chi’s martial heritage, and its popular association with elderly Chinese people in parks, probably had a lot to do with it.

It stars Reeve’s martial arts teacher and friend Tiger Chen in a conventional narrative about a martial arts student who is too impatient to follow the teachings of his elderly master and gets involved in an underground fighting ring, the setting for some truly memorable fight sequences.

Reeves plays its convener, Donaka Mark, a totally menacing and unredeemable character — kudos to him for taking the role on.

It has been a busy few years for French actress Lea Seydoux. With noteworthy performances in Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Grand Budapest Hotel and here in 2012’s Farewell, My Queen (Tuesday, 12.20am, Masterpiece), it is little wonder she got snapped up for the upcoming Bond movie SPECTRE.

In this French-language film, she plays Sidonie Laborde, a servant to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). There are romantic overtones in Sidonie’s devotion, but the queen is completely infatuated with the Duchesse de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen).

It won several Cesar Awards for the sumptuous costumes and stunning cinematography shot at the Palace of Versailles.

Intense, titillating and sometimes quite claustrophobic, it is an intriguing servant’s eye view of the final days of the French monarchy.

Her (MA15+)

4.5 stars

Friday, 12.05pm, Masterpiece

Farewell, My Queen (M)

3.5 stars

Tuesday, 12.20am, Masterpiece

Man of Tai Chi (MA15+)

3.5 stars

Wednesday, 10.25pm, Premiere