'The evaluation' review: a nightmare test for paternity

A popular but sarcastic response to the horrible behavior of another person's children is leaving a bit: he needs a license to possess a pet, but they will let someone have a child.

Bring the conjecture cinema. Taking that premise of “what would happen if” from the mandatory parental suitability of the State to a dystopian end is the elegant stranger if “evaluation” is not cooked, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel as a seemingly perfect couple in a decidedly imperfect future, who find their dream of paternity a possible reality if they can survive a week of tests. Observing in her ultra modern coastal home is a severe -looking woman called Virginia (a powerful vikander), whose unorthodox evaluation method leads to the well -intentioned MIA (Olsen) and Aryan (Patel) on the edge of personality disintegration.

Isn't it a good idea to rehearse? Perhaps not in the artificial, sterile and bureaucratically ordered world created by scriptwriters Dave Thomas and Nell Garfath-Cox (accredited as Mrs. and Mr. Thomas) and John Connelly, and gave him palpable gravity by Fleur Fortuné, directing his first feature after establishing a name in musical videos. And as with many filmmakers who make the transition to the narrative long after success with a flash the size of a bite, “the evaluation” is a dominant piece of humor until our thirst for emotional and theme deeper resonance reveals its deficiencies.

A small mouth to feed is a privilege when there is little to feed, even if innovative pharmaceutical products have allowed a few rich (and complying) to survive on a planet devastated by the weather, shortage of resources and regulated by the population. Mia and Aaryan scientists are not sitting attenuated in their pocket of this world in a remote but painful way: he is trying to solve sustainable food problems in a dense greenhouse and has a future technology laboratory space and cavely dark in which he is creating virtual pets (Gotta has the feeling of the right skin) to move that mass of mass making years ago. The responsible citizens who play with the rules should be parents, right?

However, his mysterious advisor, who plays in the stages of childhood without an indication of where the borders are, seems to intention his cautious hope. Vikander, perhaps recognizing how temptingly different this type of paper is for her, makes Virginia a disturbing tour of disciplined abandonment force. The days offer challenges, driving a tantrum, building a play house, organizing a dinner (Minnie Driver stands out playing a particularly caustic guest), who push the couple's buttons and fornate deeper questions not only about their union but who are inside and how they feel about what they are asked.

The inexpressive humor and the psychological danger of everything are handled with delicacy spiny for a good time, even when the darkness begins to establish themselves in their desires and dreams. Olsen in particular records the cracks in the sheet of an intelligent soul, good but interrogator with poise. But when the film reaches an admirable capacity with its ideas about fatherhood, authoritarianism, mortality and connection, it staggers to bring everything to the reverberant conclusion, its disturbing the first two -third merits.

Taking into account how efficiently the film establishes its rules, filmmakers choose to break one of their central and convincing enigmas when trying to explain it in a poorly written scene towards the end. The attempt of a turn that stuns the heart feels divorced from the nervous balance of the tones that Fortuné had achieved, greatly helped by fresh cinematography but in layers of Magnus Jonck, the production design of Jan Houllevigue and, of course, the delicious inscrutability in Vikander's threat. I would give Dr. Benjamin Spock nightmares.