Anna (Jessie Buckley) and Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) share true love. And thanks to modern technology that love has been scientifically proven thanks to a rather painful test. The only issue is that Anna is having some doubts and in an effort to understand more she starts a job at a love clinic where she meets Amir (Riz Ahmed). 

Fingernails opens with a title card that quotes an unknown scientist as saying heart problems manifest in the fingernails. Later we will discover that the scientific test for love involves ripping off a fingernail (love hurts?) from each candidate and placing them in a machine similar to a microwave and awaiting an outcome with only three possible results. 0%, 50% or 100% with no way of knowing whose fingernail attributes to a 50% result. 

Fingernails is not a romance movie per-say. It is more of a subtle dark comedy about the nebulous nature of love and the fact that it can never be scientifically explained. It also features a vast amount of melancholic yearning and pensive looks. 

When we meet Anna she is singing her heart out to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart in her car. Having just lost her teaching job due to cut backs she is on the look out for another. Fascinated by the courses that love clinics conduct and fuelled by her uncertainty about her relationship she interviews at Duncan’s (Luke Wilson) clinic and lands a job where she will shadow Amir and learn how he tries to bring couples closer together before conducting the test. 

The film posits many existential questions in a darkly humorous way. Would the existence of such a test help or hinder human kind? Can a person biologically be in love with more than one person? Can you fall out of love and conversely can you grow to love someone? What if you have no arms? And it features some cracking quotes such as; “Sometimes being in love is lonelier than being alone” or “Watching a love story feels safe, being in love doesn’t.” Whilst Luke Wilson’s character bravely delivers some of the most ominous news such as his divorce and creation of the clinic being a direct consequence of the test coming to existence and ending his marriage. 

Whilst alongside this you have the contradictory nature of Anna. A woman working for an institute that tries to improve relationship bonds who espouses the idea that a relationship should be worked on every day who is self destructive in her own relationship. She never openly communicates with Ryan what her concerns are and actively keeps information from him about her life and feelings. 

The issue in all of this is that the film never quite taps into this contradiction and dark comedy quite hard enough. It becomes ponderous rather than cutting. But keeping us interested throughout are the wonderful performances and chemistry from and between Buckley and Ahmed. Their longing glances are enough fuel for the film to live off and keep us interested to the end. 

Does Fingernails teach us anything new? Not really. Love is messy. Love cannot be scientifically explained. Love can only be felt by the people involved. What Fingernails does have is a tiny spark of intrigue, some dark comedy and two good leads. It just never quite made me fall in love with it.