Faux intimacy is Theodore's stock in trade, yet he falls for the seductive skills of an electronic office organiser that reads him like a book – and offers unquestioning allegiance in the wake of his failed marriage to independently minded Catherine (Rooney Mara). Within this evolving electronic ecosystem, the premise of Spike Jonze's self-penned modern romance seems like business as usual, as Joaquin Phoenix's soon-to-be divorcee finds unexpected happiness with an operating system (OS) tailor-made to put him at his ease. Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a twitchy, tortured soul hiding behind tortoiseshell spectacles who holds down a day job ghostwriting personalised (e-)letters for those unable to put their emotions into words. Meanwhile, over in the real world, plenty of people have engaged in flirty interactions with everything from their satnav (popular voice options include a Frenchman who tells you that you look fabulous as you take the next left) to their Siri (as per The Big Bang Theory), with both marriages and divorces resulting from the intimate interactions and infidelities of online avatars. And in Andrew Niccol's S1m0ne, a film director creates a supposedly compliant virtual movie star with whom the whole world promptly becomes infatuated, forcing him into a lifelong relationship that begets digital children. Harrison Ford's Deckard didn't seem to know whether he was human or robotic as he fell in love with a replicant in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. In the Frankenstein-inspired 80s teen comedy Weird Science, two teenagers brought dream girl Kelly LeBrock to life by wiring a Barbie doll to a computer, while Electric Dreams placed an operating system named Edgar in the middle of a love triangle with a musical twist. As far as sci-fi cinema is concerned, there's nothing unusual about falling in love with a computer or conjuring your perfect partner from a keyboard.
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