Toronto 2024 Review: THE ASSESSMENT, Savage Science Fiction Parable of State Authority and Parenting

Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, “we took a pregnancy test,” Fleur Fortuné’s debut feature, The Assessment, is a saturated, button-pushing provocation on parental anxiety. It is a Kobayashi Maru wrapped in a Voight-Kampff test inside the Stanford Prison experiment. It even comes with its very own computer simulated Schrödinger's cat. 



 

Sometime in the future climate change has wreaked havoc on the planet. Nearly all the biomass has been wiped out to an unforgiving desert. In the madness of the apocalypse, for the survival of the human race, even the pets had to be culled. Now, the small number of Earth's educated elites who survived have build artificial domes, with hydroponic gardens, and live in minimalist-abundant luxury, nearly immortal. The latter is thanks, in part, to a vastly smaller population, but also to a miracle drug that halts aging and suppresses procreation. The few who are allowed by the state to have children must first undergo a week-long parental competency test. This "Assessment" is administered by a specialist kind of bureaucrat that has absolute final say in the matter. No exceptions.



 

Alicia Vikander, who had to be cast here due to her performance as the iconic robot AI in Ex Machina, is the Assessor. She emotionlessly explains the ground-rules to two successful academics, Mia and Aaryan, who desire to bring a child into their tastefully designed ocean-front home. Consider this the Deco Mediterranean version of the brutalist Nordic abode in Alex Garland's Turing test. Here, the warm waters which surround the couple's dusty piece of property act as one of the films many potent symbols. On one hand, the equatorial sea is a womblike place to float in its infinite vastness, On the other, it is a turbulent caldron, full of fatal riptide. 



With perfect sitting posture, Mia immediately pushes back against the opaque nature of the process. Aaryan, beside her in support, tries to figure out how both flatter the person in charge, while also trying to game the system. These initial insights (more shown, than told) into character are put through the ringer, as The Assessment goes from a series of uncomfortable but calm questions, to Virginia aggressively role-playing their future daughter, and violating their personal space. Sudden, eye-melting, title cards divide the film into day-long chapters, with the effect of snapping the viewer into attention as the assessment compromises Mia and Aaryan's domestic order, damages their careers, and wreaks havoc on their extended family relationships. You know, raising kids.

The whole assessment process is absurd. Kafkaesque. It is violent. It is triggering. It is very darkly funny, but might send some audience members straight for the exit. The satire, deceptively obvious, cuts sharp. Or, more aptly: It hits close to home.

 

The acutely discomforting ways Fortuné savages many accepted notions of institutionally indoctrinated, the 'overly-online' social media folks that often get told to touch grass is perhaps the secret genius here. Many, if not all of the present-day ‘accepted’ social mores seem so progressive and modern today, will be turned (or dropped) on their heads as society races into the future. What was once forward thinking shall become gauche or even abhorrent. The smug and the judgey will eventually be the antiquated and the primitive. Science fiction is typically made through a lens on the future from the point of view of now. The Assessment is often feral at taking apart our current moment.

Few things (with a possible exception being the Gaza conflict) are as polarizing or alienating as judging other peoples parenting choices. Minnie Driver shows up to demonstrate. A surprise dinner guest at an uncomfortable family gathering sprung by the Assessor, she lords her 153 years of age over the rest of the guests while sarcastically scolding both the Assessor, and those who would subject themselves willingly to such perversion of State authority. It is obliquely implied that she might be quietly disappeared by said State for her speaking truth to power, but for that fact that old folks simply do not give a shit when the world has evolved so far and so fast, and possibly for the worst.

 

If The Assessment never quite goes into batshit Zardoz territory — a film it narrowly kisses on the sci-fi Venn diagram — that is only because John Boorman’s mind-melting WTF was a product of the post-hippie 1970s. In some ways, architecturally and structurally, it does resemble Michael Winterbottom’s cooly post-nationalist Code 46, which it should be noted, is possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the 21st century. 



Fleur Fortuné cut her teeth (as Fleur) directing music videos for Tricky, Travis Scott and Drake. Her mise-en-scene is impeccable; shots are exquisitely framed. She changes the nature of the image to reflect the exhaustion felt by the prospective parents, and highlights the contrast of Mia and Aaryan in subtle ways. Is there such a thing as pre-partum (or rather pre-conception) depression? She creates a handsomely subversive space for the didactic chaos she unleashes on her unsuspecting audience. It begs the uncomfortable question: Do we want an artificial and safe simulacra life, internet porn, dating apps, and social media, or the messy risk of existing out in the world, figuring things out, being present and vulnerable as we take the plunge?