Wrapped up in the question of what it means to be a good parent is the more loaded question of what it means to be a good person. The latter ought to precede the former; after all, parents bear the brunt of an all-important task: raising and shaping future generations of human beings, the lifeblood of all societies, be they ascendant or slowly eroding. In The Assessment, this very question has become a matter of the state. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel), a couple fortunate enough to pass the stringent selection process, plan for the arrival of an assessor, a functionary who must reside with them for a week to evaluate their fitness for being parents. Their assessment proves to be an absurdist, exhausting crucible, as their assessor, Virginia (Alicia Vikander), finds ever more disconcerting and diabolical ways to test the couple’s bond.
As far as its look and feel, Fleur Fortuné’s debut feature is intentionally crafted. Magnus Jønck’s cinematography leverages the scale and geometry of Mia and Aaryan’s impressive, isolated home, the main site of the film’s action, creating an atmosphere that oscillates between claustrophobic and labyrinthine. The composed style of shots establishing the film’s appropriately clinical feel gradually gives way to something more subtly destabilizing as Virginia’s trials take their toll on the couple. Aside from the digitally immersive chamber where Aaryan conducts his work, the filmmakers generally opt for a stripped-back sci-fi approach, with little of the technology that’s transformed this future world visible to the audience. The goal is to root them in the familiar, depict a reality we can almost recognize, or at least not stretch our minds too far to imagine. This choice centers our focus on the film’s greatest strength — its cast. Olsen, Patel, and Vikander are the engines that power The Assessment, with Vikander in particular showing off a range of modes — inscrutable, chilling, hilariously deranged, and finally pitifully wounded — and generating a rich sense of unpredictability that works to the film’s advantage. All three actors, in different places across the runtime, find ways to endow their characters with a compelling rawness, doing their best to anchor a story that would benefit from an equally fleshed-out script.
But while finding mileage as a tense and offbeat genre exercise, The Assessment falls quite short of full marks when evaluated as a social thriller. It provides no interesting comment on the experience of being a parent, instead using the idea of parenthood as a stand-in for all the matters of life we consider inalienably human yet which exist under threat from oppressive authorities. The full nature of the fictional ruling order and its structures are left purposefully opaque, but whatever nuances you may presume are present get flattened into a vague sketch of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, with the loosest outlines of a conflict between the haves and have-nots tacked on toward the end for good measure. Nor does The Assessment sufficiently examine the complexity of human relationships, as the fault lines between Mia and Aaryan never seem convincingly fatal enough to warrant their ultimate decisions. A stronger story would have more to say about the ways in which adversity can reveal things about a person, test their mettle, and possibly provoke betrayals of our self-conception and values. What separates enduring relationships from ones that fail? Lacking the heft to stick the landing in exploring these questions, The Assessment doesn’t have the heft to fully maximize the potential of its premise, its entertaining eccentricities dulled by its disappointing shallowness.
DIRECTOR: Fleur Fortune; CAST: Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel, Indira Varma; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnolia Pictures; IN THEATERS: March 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 54 min.
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