Textual Relationship

Are online relationships as meaningful as those we develop in person? Popular wisdom is that they're not, and Textual Relationship ostensibly shares this viewpoint, but as its story develops, it rather suggests the opposite.

Sarah Langrish-Smith plays Uniquetalent_33 (we never know her by any other name). David Frias-Robles is DarkDemon92. They meet on a dating site, get talking, get to know each other and embark on a sexual relationship - all without meeting in the flesh. When they do meet, it's clear that, despite agreeing that they both look like they do on screen, they're having difficulty reconciling their virtual intimacy with the reality of bodies, textures, chemicals and all that meaty stuff. Conversation is stilted - until they get back on their phones. It's still easier to communicate at a distance than it is when face to face, and that goes for sexual relations too. Nevertheless, they decide to move in together.

It's easy enough to make comedy out of a cultural change that still has most people feeling lost, but what makes this film work is that we also see the emotional side of the romance, the awkwardness and disappointment that illustrate its importance even as it struggles to keep going. The style of the film is very distanced, many of the scenes short and to-camera as if we were on dating sites ourselves watching these people vlog their experience. Nevertheless, we see their alienation. There's an astute ambiguity about what this means. Is it unrealistic for them to try to connect online, or is it the traditional expectations of living together, marriage, children and growing old together that are unrealistic in the modern age?

If all this sounds a bit bleak, there's dry humour in the film too, as the two come to suspect each other of online cheating - what exactly are the boundaries in this new world? - and as they sit at a distance from one another on a park bench watching another couple snog, with something like jealousy. Is this another, older manifestation of the same phenomenon: that sometimes it's easier to be attracted to the idea of a person than to the real thing?

This is a widespread cultural debate and Textual Relationship doesn't bring anything particularly new to it, but it does sum up some of the key issues neatly, like a time capsule. For that reason, it's likely destined to age well, becoming funnier over time.