Cinema East’s summer series has included a run of phenomenal films, viewed on French Legation’s lush lawn beneath the Texas night sky. If you’ve attended any of them, I probably don’t need to explain how magical the experience can be, and it’s probably why I’ve seen the same faces at many of the screenings throughout the summer.
This Sunday, the series’ final film, The Heart Machine, will show. The film premiered at SXSW this past year and stars John Gallagher Jr. of HBO’s The Newsroom. The film depicts a long-distance relationship between Cody (Gallagher) and Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil); the former is in NYC, while the latter is in Berlin. But Cody begins to have suspicions about Virgina’s whereabouts, leading him down a paranoid and tumultuous rabbit hole. In an interview with Sarasota Film Festival, director Zachary Wigon said, “I had been in a relationship with a woman a few years back, in which much of the relationship was carried out over Skype. It was strange because the relationship worked really well over Skype, but once we were reunited in person, the relationship was clearly a bad match. So that got me wondering, what if you had a character who preferred a Skype relationship to one conducted in person?”
Although Wigon’s film occurs in a more contemporary and less fanciful, magical world than Spike Jonze’s Her, I hear in Wigon’s comment similarities to that futuristic study of relationships. I’m excited to see what questions Wigon’s film raises about relationships, about digital culture, and about the self. The Heart Machine screens Sunday night at The French Legation at 7th and San Marcos. Doors open at 7:00 and the film starts at dark. Tickets are $3-$5. Watch the trailer below.
