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Zoe review – Ewan McGregor falls for a robot in stylish, dour drama

The director of Like Crazy has made another film about a fractured relationship but strong performances can’t save a story that suffers in comparison to similar, better dramas

W ith 2011’s Like Crazy, writer-director Drake Doremus announced himself as a skilled observer of the heart-swelling highs and soul-crushing lows of being in a relationship. Specifically in that film, the minute intricacies of being in a long-distance relationship played out by Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin. It picked up the grand jury prize at Sundance and while the buzz didn’t translate at the box office, it led to Doremus landing a string of starry follow-ups.

While Breathe In, which paired Jones with Guy Pearce, was a moderate critical success, with each ensuing film, Doremus’s star started to fade. Despite a splashy premiere at the Venice film festival and a cast headed up by Kristen Stewart, Equals was a misfire and the following year saw a muted reaction at Sundance to Nicholas Hoult in Newness, later dumped with little fanfare on Netflix.

In his latest, premiering at the Tribeca film festival , Doremus returns to themes that he has now become synonymous with. Like his previous projects, it’s an examination of modern romance and like 2015’s Equals, there’s an added sci-fi bent. In the near future, synthetic humans have become commonplace additions to society. While most inhabit service roles, making drinks and cutting grass, one company has mastered a higher class of robot, virtually indistinguishable from the humans around them. Zoe (Léa Seydoux) works in this lab alongside designer Cole (Ewan McGregor) and the two share a light workplace flirtation.

But underneath the surface lies a secret, something that prevents Zoe and Cole from progressing any further. When Zoe takes a compatibility test at work to check who would make a match for her, Cole is forced to tell her the truth: Zoe isn’t human. With Zoe now aware of who and what she is, so comes a re-examination of the world around her and her place within it. While initially Cole tries to fight his attraction to her, he soon relents and the pair forge ahead into uncharted territory.

There’s an ever-expanding subgenre of films that imagine a future where dating and relationships have been irrevocably affected by technology. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Marjorie Prime, Her, The Lobster and Black Mirror’s Hang the DJ all existed in this heightened territory and all managed to find identifiable truths wrapped up in fantastical packaging. The world created within Zoe exists alongside these, not too dissimilar to the one we’re in now but with a clear, profound difference. Given the rise of AI and, more specifically, the rise of AI aimed at decreasing loneliness, there’s a timeliness to the events that take place in Zoe.

The company at the center of the story creates a range of products that feel a mere modification away from many that are being developed at the moment. There’s a pleasingly casual nature to the way that tech is embedded within the story. While some exposition is a bit clumsy, the world feels mostly well-constructed and easy to believe. It’s not hard to see the appeal of an aesthetically pleasing partner who, as the employees keep reminding us, will never break your heart or leave you. The characters here are weathered by heartbreak, tired of disappointment and looking for something or someone to believe in.

Doremus, and screenwriter Richard Greenberg, have packed their film with intriguing questions. How much of tech is biased by its creator? Is compatibility able to be predicted through an algorithm? How much perfection does one really want in a partner? But while the script’s early observations are delivered with subtlety, as the film progresses others are given a more heavy-handed touch. One of the products in the film is a pill that mimics the sensation of falling in love so couples either take it to briefly recapture their early romance or strangers take it for a more intense sexual high. As with Doremus’s last film Newness, this world of easily accessible casual sex becomes emotionally destructive but the script doesn’t get much further than that hardly earth-shattering conclusion. Although it does allow us to see a robo-brothel with a strange, underwhelming cameo from Christina Aguilera as an android of the night.

One of the bigger problems here is how easy it becomes to compare Zoe with better, richer films of its ilk. The social commentary feels somewhat shallow compared to the perceptive nature of Her or Eternal Sunshine or even a number of episodes of Black Mirror. It’s so stylishly made that one wishes the world on screen could have housed a more emotionally complex story to match.

At its core, there’s a strong, haunted performance from McGregor playing a man wearing his heart and his emotional baggage on full display and at times, he has a naturalistic flirtatious rapport with a striking Seydoux. Yet the film demands so much investment in their relationship that when events lurch into rockier territory, the shift is so sudden that it’s difficult to really feel what is required. There’s also an underused Rashida Jones as McGregor’s understanding ex, a somewhat meaningless role for Theo James as a curious experiment and a campy turn from Miranda Otto as a madam.

Zoe is an attractively made yet dour and often shallow look at love that muddles along when it should be searing a hole. It’s an impressive shell that needs a bigger heart.

Zoe is showing at the Tribeca film festival and will launch on Amazon Prime later this year

• Tribeca film festival
• First look review
• Ewan McGregor
• Rashida Jones
• Romance films
• Drama films
• Christina Aguilera

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Film Review: ‘Zoe’

Léa Seydoux and Ewan McGregor star in Drake Doremus' sci-fi love story about a future of synthetic romance that does't look so far from our own.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“ Zoe ,” a chilly but soft-headed do-androids-dream-of-electric-love?  sci-fi romance, is one of those movies in which the future is depicted as being a heartbeat away from the present, a scheme that serves two neatly interlocking purposes. It allows an ambitious indie filmmaker — in this case, Drake Doremus — to make a science-fiction fantasy on a relatively low budget. It also allows him to make an atmospheric statement about how the technological fetishism of today is fast becoming the only reality of tomorrow.

In “Zoe,” love is something that people still pine for, but it’s been quantified, codified, systematized. Every one of your deepest yearnings is on-line. (Sound familiar?) The film centers on a company called Relationist, which interviews people by computer to match them up with ideally fitting partners (lady-robot voice to prospective couple: “Your chances for a successful relationship are 75 percent. Congratulations!”). The company also markets a drug that simulates feelings of romantic euphoria (“Try Benysol, and fall in love for the first time. Again”). And then there’s its most revolutionary invention, which is just emerging from the experimental stage: astonishingly lifelike synthetic humans, all designed to be the “perfect” partners who will never leave or disappoint you.

They’re the creation of Cole ( Ewan McGregor ), an artificial-intelligence engineer at Relationist who may (ya think?) be compensating for his own loneliness. Cole is divorced (though his ex-wife, played by Rashida Jones, is still strikingly tender and affectionate), and he has a son of about 10, but every night he goes home to his apartment, pours some wine, and sinks into the sadness of his isolation. McGregor, in a buzz cut and stylish horn rims, plays Cole as a saintly geek who’s become gun-shy in love, which may explain why he’s so boyishly tentative and faltering when it comes to flirting with Zoe (Léa Seydoux), a division head at work who’s sweet and smart and gazes at him with adoring eyes, as if their relationship were simply meant to be.

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It’s hard to discuss “Zoe” without revealing the film’s essential premise, so let me toss in a spoiler alert before I explain why Cole and Zoe, even when they’re just glancing at each other, appear to be floating on a gauzy romantic cloud somewhere above the rest of humanity. Zoe (pronounced “Zoh”) is a synthetic human, designed by Cole. So is Ash, a Relationist prototype played by Theo James, looking more than ever like a suave young British Billy Zane. These two characters are the film’s dream image of the future; they’re the touchy-feely replicants you want to fall in love with. What makes Zoe even more special is that she’s been designed to have no awareness that she’s synthetic. And Cole, unwittingly, has nudged himself right into the center of his experiment by swooning for his own creation.

Léa Seydoux, from “Blue is the Warmest Color,” doesn’t play Zoe as an eerily flawless virtual beauty who’s too good to be true. On the contrary, she seems just good enough to be true, which is, of course, part of the logic of movies. After all, it isn’t just A.I. nerds of the not-so-distant future who are in the business of devising impossibly perfect human beings. So are filmmakers. (They’ve been doing it for 100 years, starting with Lillian Gish and Cary Grant.) Seydoux, her wide face and toothy incandescent smile framed by straight blonde tresses cut, strikingly, into bangs, speaks with a mild accent, and she floods the screen with awareness. The whole design of “Zoe” is that we never question Zoe’s humanity — her desire, her ability to feel inner pain — because Seydoux, with her delicate radiance, makes it apparent that those things are all too real.

So where’s the downside of Cole falling in love with her? Where’s the dramatic conflict? It’s all there in Cole’s reticence. (In other words, there isn’t enough of one.) Doremus is a talented director, but he’s too in thrall to the elevated sentimentality of his conceits. This is his second feature in a row, after “Newness,” his perils-of-the-hookup-culture love story, in which he has dissected the spirituality of “feelings” in the age of technology. But “Zoe” doesn’t have much to say that’s new on the subject.

The film’s novelty is that Doremus, having devised a sci-fi projection of where the world of digital connection is headed (with a cautionary wink at the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance our emotional lives), has built his story around the warm and fuzzy idea that the romance between Cole and Zoe is just fine. In its way, it’s a fashionable light-side-of-the-machine L.A. view of things. If it feels good to love a replicant, do it!

It’s Cole who has the problem. He dives in, then draws back. As Zoe’s creator, he knows more than anyone that she isn’t real. Yet where are his feelings for her coming from? “Zoe,” like Cole, ties itself up in a lot of high-minded hand-wringing, and the result is that the movie, though it’s not badly told, fails to grip you. Could it find an audience? A modest one, perhaps, but it’s too moody, too languid. It should have been called “Fifty Shades of A.I.”

It’s not as if Doremus is above commercial calculation. Once again, he has fallen for a visual scheme — a filtered metallic glow — that’s supposed to be soulful but makes the movie look like a pretentious wine-cooler commercial. And he creates a subplot set in a brothel of robot prostitutes — not realistic ones like Zoe, but obvious synthetic-skinned party-doll androids, notably one portrayed by Christina Aguilera, a piece of stunt casting that works well enough (she’s fine playing a character of sexy vacancy) but that still doesn’t add up to much. Doremus has been spinning out variations on his moony, push-pull romantic vision ever since “Like Crazy” (2011), and here’s some advice to him: He should consider signing on to do something more studio-friendly and less “personal.” Because right now what he’s making is okay, but it’s really just the squishy art version of studio conventionality.

Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival (Gala), April 22, 2018. Running time: 104 MIN.

• Production: An IM Global, Scott Free Productions prod., in association with Amazon Studios. Producers: Kevin Walsh, Michael Pruss, Drake Doremus, Robert George. Executive producers: Ridley Scott, Stuart Ford, Greg Shapiro, Kate Buckley, John Zois, Lawrence Bender, Michelle Ton Zhou, Li Li, Michael Flynn.
• Crew: Director: Drake Doremus. Screenplay: Richard Greenberg. Camera (color, widescreen): John Guleserian. Editor: Douglas Crise. Music: Dam Romer.
• With: Léa Seydoux, Ewan McGregor, Rashida Jones, Theo James, Christina Aguilera, Miranda Otto, Matthew Gray Gubler, Helen Johns.

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A Robot Romance on Amazon, American Indies and a ‘Taxi Driver’ Commentary

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By Glenn Kenny

• July 13, 2018

The best way to approach “Zoe,” a science-fiction romance that debuts on Amazon Prime on July 20, would be to skip past the first 25 minutes. At this point, you can enjoy a good swath of the chemistry between the lead actors, Ewan McGregor and Léa Seydoux, as their characters discover each other and enrich their time together. They really do make a nice couple. It’s the buildup to this section, and the subsequent fallout from it, where you find trouble areas.

The film’s director, Drake Doremus, first made an impression on me with his 2011 picture “Like Crazy,” a story of young love fraying apart because one character, a British woman with a limited visa, might have to leave the United States. The movie was frank and brisk; its lead performances, from Anton Yelchin ( who died in 2016 ); Felicity Jones; and before-she-was-a-star Jennifer Lawrence were all excellent.

The director took what I considered to be a very wrong turn in his futuristic 2016 romance “Equals,” set in a ludicrous society in which Love Is Forbidden. In 2017, “Newness” brought matters back to the present, critiquing the Tinder-driven dating life with splashy but mixed results. (All these films can be seen on Amazon; “Equals” is free for Prime members.) For “Zoe,” written by Richard Greenberg, Mr. Doremus goes back to the future, focusing on a love scientist, Cole (Mr. McGregor), who’s engineering “synthetic companions.” One of the best employees at his low-rent-looking company is Ms. Seydoux’s title character, who crushes hard on Cole.

After shrugging off the interest shown in her by Ash, a very sleek synthetic, Zoe wonders why her compatibility test with Cole came up with zero chance for a successful relationship. Those of you lucky enough to have seen the 1962 cult film “Creation of the Humanoids” will have guessed the answer by now. Hell, you’ve probably guessed even if you haven’t seen that film.

Despite all the complications, Cole and Zoe take a chance on love. And it’s in these scenes that the movie exhibits the most charm.

I will not trot out Proverbs 26:11 on Mr. Doremus, but I really don’t think sci-fi is his calling. Although the flaws in logic and general implausibility of the proceedings have to be laid at Mr. Greenberg’s feet as well. It’s clear that the world-building here, such as it is, is less concerned with being convincingly futuristic than it is in reflecting the Way We Live Now. After the couple experience a schism, they each seek solace in drug-fueled liaisons with others, and the rationale for sci-fi allegory is pretty much dispensed with.

The yearning displayed by Cole and Zoe is meant to be profound. But at a certain point the examination of loss in love ceases to show sensitivity and begins to look like emotional immaturity. Throughout “Zoe,” characters talk about how wonderful it would be to have a companion who would never leave you, who could always understand you completely, and more. But let’s get real. Once you’ve acquired a fair amount of life experience, you learn to accept that bad things happen and other people, even ones with the best intentions, can be unreliable, and can hurt you.

In “Zoe,” the characters, all in their 30s at least (except for the robots, I know, but bear with me), still believe that 100-percent glitch-free everlasting love is a reasonable life goal. It’s this component, even more than the poorly realized sci-fi trappings, that finally make the movie a little insufferable.

If you’re in search of American independent film that displays genuine daring and very little lovesickness, a series this month at the streaming site Filmatique will fit the bill. The site, which generally features international films that have fared well at festivals but not found distribution in the United States, will feature films made in the United States for the first time. The series is called “American Independents” and is organized in partnership with the small film company Factory 25.

The series kicked off on July 5 with 2013’s “Sun Don’t Shine,” the feature directing debut of Amy Seimetz. Ms. Seimetz has gone on to prominence as an actor (she can be seen in “Alien: Covenant,” the second season of “Stranger Things,” and will appear in the upcoming remake of “Pet Sematary”) and the co-director of the Starz series “The Girlfriend Experience.” (Which is based on the 2009 film in which I appeared as an actor; I have no affiliation with the show but am cordially acquainted with Ms. Seimetz and others who work on the series.) On July 12 came 2016’s “For the Plasma,” which the critic Mike D’Angelo called “the right kind of awful, if such a thing can exist.”

On July 19, the audacious “MA,” directed by and starring Celia Rowlson-Hall debuts. Its updated virgin birth story is told entirely in dance, with Ms. Rowlson-Hall doing the heaviest lifting, particularly in a motel room scene in which her character splits genders (you have to see it to really get it). The collection is rounded out by “Christmas Again,” starring Kentucker Audley , debuting on July 26, and “Two Gates of Sleep,” debuting on Aug. 2. Each of the films will stay on Filmatique for a year.

I don’t doubt, if you’re a film enthusiast, that you’ve seen the upsetting 1976 film “Taxi Driver,” perhaps even more than once. So it’s not necessarily big news that the movie is now available to stream via FilmStruck’s Criterion Channel. However, this streaming version of the movie has a special attraction: an audio commentary recorded in 1986 by the director Martin Scorsese and the screenwriter Paul Schrader.

This frank and informative commentary was attached to the Criterion Collection laser disc of the movie. Once that edition went out of print, and the video licensing rights to the movie went back to Sony, which owns Columbia, the studio that produced the film, the commentary stayed with Criterion. (Subsequent video versions have been issued by Sony, with different supplements.) It’s a great listen, in part because it was recorded only a decade after the movie was made.

“It sprang from my head like an animal,” Mr. Schrader recalls of the script, which he wrote in less than two weeks. Later, he notes of the collaboration between himself, Mr. Scorsese, and the lead actor Robert De Niro, that it was a case of “three people coming together at a certain point in their lives all needing to say the same thing.” Mr. Scorsese talks about his influences and his desire to make the viewer perceive things as he himself perceives them, with a certain speed and intensity.

In the years since the making of the film and the recording of the commentary, Mr. Scorsese’s style has evolved and expanded; contrast the very fast 2013 “Wolf of Wall Street” with the contemplative, grieving 2016 “Silence.” This commentary retains considerable value whether you’re a film studies or film production maven, and offers some diverting anecdotes as well.

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Zoe is an unimaginative waste of science-fiction potential: EW review

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

What a time to contemplate robots. At the same time that Silicon Valley tech moguls are being challenged about their business model of harvesting users’ personal information for their own profits and developing artificial intelligence to boot , there has been a bevy of new cinema contemplating the future of our computer-driven world. In the last year alone, Blade Runner 2049 and Westworld both wonder if sufficiently-developed artificial intelligence could grow to equal or even surpass human capabilities. Director Drake Doremus’ new Ridley Scott-produced film Zoe, which made its world premiere as a centerpiece selection at the Tribeca Film Festival last week, approaches the same question, but in a far more reductive fashion.

Léa Seydoux stars as the titular Zoe, who works in the world’s premier AI lab. Ewan McGregor plays Cole, the brilliant inventor who’s been brought on to develop robots (called “synthetics”) who can actually feel and empathize with human beings. Cole proves his genius by activating an all-new robot, Ash (Theo James). Ash’s presence unsettles Zoe, and she soon realizes that she, too, is a synthetic. She’s only a few weeks old, but she was given memories and allowed to believe she was a fully-functioning adult woman in order to see how other humans would react to her.

Rather than take this revelation as an opportunity to explore her own strange individuality, Zoe professes her love for Cole. The movie never quite clarifies whether this is because Zoe truly adores Cole’s awkward mannerisms and divorced-dad aesthetic or whether she just imprinted on him, like a baby animal does with the first adult it sees. The fact that Ash developed his own crush on Zoe within minutes of being alive suggests that it’s the latter, which makes the Cole-Zoe relationship a strange romance for the movie to focus on. The film certainly never explains why Zoe would be attracted to Cole aside from the fact that he created her. He spends most of the movie disheveled and confused (it’s like Zoe fell in love with the frumpier of McGregor’s Fargo twins), and rarely provides the affection she desires. The fascinating (and quasi-Oedipal?) dynamics of this attraction between creation and creator are, unfortunately, barely explored. The film might have been better served by a more intense focus on Cole and Zoe, since the story lines involving other characters like Theo and Cole’s ex-wife Emma (Rashida Jones) never really go anywhere.

Some of the most interesting science-fiction stories imagine robots who are developed as a utility or cheap workforce, only to later realize their own potential to challenge humans’ place as singular masters of the world. Zoe features no such development of self-consciousness, especially since the robots’ role as a source of human empathy and connection soon gets overshadowed by the development of a drug that grants the psycho-chemical experience of falling in love for the first time. On top of that, Zoe and Theo barely interact, so the film lacks the kind of robot-to-robot conversations that provide much of the fascination in Westworld . Stories like the aforementioned Ex Machina and Blade Runner see frustrated robots rebelling against the human creators who abandoned them, but Zoe lacks such revolutionary fervor, and doesn’t fill the void with anything else. Even after visiting an android brothel featuring Jewels (Christina Aguilera), Zoe still wants nothing more than Cole’s love. For his part, Cole’s only real struggle is debating whether he feels comfortable having sex with a machine he created.

Rather than challenging our preconceived views of consciousness and relationships, Zoe ’s futuristic world is thus reduced to a male wish-fulfillment fantasy: What if you could create the perfect girlfriend, and she immediately fell in love with you forever? It would probably look something like this: an unimaginative waste of science-fiction potential. “Look” is the key word. Unlike another recent robot story, Janelle Monáe’s visual album Dirty Computer , Zoe does not fill its visuals with radical imaginings of how synthetic androids might dress themselves and how the world might change with them in it. Instead, the film’s sets are as white and drab as Kanye West’s recent decor tweets . This is a movie that casts Christina Aguilera as a robot and yet still manages to be boring. C

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the zone of interest.

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Though it’s been seven months, I remain haunted by “The Zone of Interest.” When I first watched writer-director Jonathan Glazer ’s radical take on the Holocaust back in May, I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was so startling about it. There have been many films on this horrific chapter in history—from “Night and Fog” to “ Schindler's List ” to “ The Pianist ,” and as recently as “Occupied City”—all asking the viewer to bear witness to unfathomable suffering under a genocidal regime’s brutality. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret Glazer’s adaptation of Martin Amis ’ same-titled novel as him asking viewers to simply witness. It’s a disturbing work, guided by a discomforting sense of immaculateness that chills the viewer. It is the sanitation the film performs, which speaks to the now, in a way few Holocaust films have done before.  

You could, of course, accuse Glazer’s film of merely being a formal exercise. He challenges himself to not only work purely through atmosphere, but also takes the risk of telling this story from a German perspective. Rudolf Höss ( Christian Friedel ) is the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. When he first appears on-screen, he is with his wife Hedwig ( Sandra Hüller ) and their children, relaxing at the riverside, in a verdant field surrounded by lush mountains. Soon we are introduced to their dream house, a tall concrete structure surrounded by a lavish yard and seemingly even taller walls. On the other side of these barriers is the camp itself. Outside of a single shot—a low angle of Rudolf, framed by black smoking billowing in the background—we never really see inside the camp. Instead, viewers are asked to aurally visualize. Much has been explained by Glazer about the two movies occurring within “The Zone of Interest” (the one perceived through sight and the other through sound). That tension is obvious, yet no less powerful. 

Much has also been made of the banality of evil. The Höss family live next door to ongoing genocide yet never comment on the horrific screams or the smell of death nearby. Thus, there is an expected coldness which seeps into the film’s lack of sentimentality. They raise their children under a pretense of normalcy—Rudolf tells them late-night bedtime stories, takes them horseback riding, and participates in other pastoral pursuits. Because of the emotional blankness, a burden falls on Friedel and Hüller to chart a tricky course: How human can you make someone who is clearly inhuman? Friedel gives nothing away, relying on a cold stoicism that translates to his frigid posture. Hüller is a tad slipperier, a vicious rattlesnake with a blade for a tail. If not for their performances, you could see how Glazer’s framing could easily go left.   

But that feeling isn’t anything new for Glazer: “ Birth ” was widely criticized for its ending and the on-screen relationship between Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright . “ Under the Skin ,” though better received critically, walks a fine feminist line. Those films, along with his debut “ Sexy Beast ,” witnessed Glazer pushing his audio-visual storytelling toward leaner, angular compositions and a dynamic sense of sound capable of unnerving the viewer. In “The Zone of Interest,” with cinematographer Lukasz Zal , he furthers those two desires, often linking domestic spaces causally to exterior sound: When a train rumbles by, bringing more Jewish people, a package comes to the house with stockings presumably taken from the murdered occupants of the previous train. On Rudolf’s side of the wall, the family celebrates life (birthdays and social gatherings) while death occurs on the other side.      

The close correlation speaks to the repulsively intimate relationship Rudolf and his family have with destruction. They profit off an entire people’s death in unspeakable ways: In one scene, one of Rudolf’s sons has a flashlight in bed. But he’s not rifling at a comic book in the dark; he’s rummaging through his collection of gold teeth. In another scene, Hedwig receives a fur coat. She tries on the fine pelt, twisting her body to catch her every angle in the mirror. In one of the pockets, she discovers the previous owner's lipstick; in the next scene she tries the lipstick on. Their easeful proximity to murder is thrown in stark relief when Hedwig’s mother arrives. At first, her mother is impressed by their “scenic” home. “You really have landed on your feet, my child,” she says to a proud Hedwig. But when the emanating sounds and smells become apparent to Hedwig’s mother, she reacts in a way that shocks Hedwig. 

In a film predicated on dissonance, the Höss’ persistent tidying up looms large. Whenever Rudolf takes off his boots, there is a Jewish prisoner there to clean them. When soot from the camp touches the river, Rudolf’s kids are scrubbed down with scalding hot water. When Rudolf has affairs, he washes his privates in a slop sink before returning to his wife’s bedroom. Weeds are pulled and human ashes are used to replenish. Every misdeed by the Höss family functions on this cycle of obfuscation. Composer Mica Levi ’s foreboding score, which can be guttural and dirty in infrared scenes, wherein a girl picks up food from the mud, participates in the dichotomy of polishing and revealing. The use of the color white—new sheets, sleek suits, and sterile office walls—depends upon this blurring. Even the language, the way everyone speaks about death in mechanical terms and technicalities, works to wash over the truth. If you’re always talking in circles about your crimes, isn’t it easier to continue performing them in a straight line? 

As much as Glazer’s film is about a specific moment in time, it’s equally concerned with how history records tragedy. Consider when Rudolf is transferred from Auschwitz to Oranienburg; Hedwig wants to stay in the dream house, in the reality she’s crafted for herself. Rudolf on the other hand, for the first time, openly speaks on the phone to his wife about murder without softening the language. Her reaction is grim; his words barely register. “It’s in the middle of the night and I need to be in bed,” she disturbingly replies. He hangs up on her, leaves the office and descends the stairs. While walking down the steps, he vomits several times until he comes to a barely lit hallway. Editor Paul Watts makes a narrative-breaking cut to present-day Auschwitz. It’s being cleaned—swept, mopped, and vacuumed—for visitors to witness the artifacts (shoes and luggage) now without owners. 

This juxtaposition allows for the two results of sanitization to be at play. For much of the film, viewers see how sanitization can be used to erase. Here, Glazer gives us a glimpse of how it can also be used to maintain. Because how we remember history, how we make note of current events—through propaganda, photography, video, and the internet—is a constant interplay between the truth as it exists and as it has been edited. The fact that "The Zone of Interest" arrives now, as world powers manipulate the narrative to sanitize their crimes, makes Glazer's images all the more chilling. Glazer’s intermingling of the now and the then, appearance versus truth, life and annihilation are rendered into unignorable magnitude.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film Credits

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Rated PG-13

105 minutes

Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss

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Common sense media reviewers.

Drama about grief lacks connection; teen drinking, pot use.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Themes of family, love, grief, guilt, resilience,

An estranged, unemployed father is depicted agains

Interracial romance in which skin color is never a

Brief images of TV coverage of the Twin Towers bur

In two scenes, sex is implied situationally, inclu

Strong language includes "ass," "a--hole," "bitch,

Teens smoke pot and make comments that it "heighte

Parents need to know that Dear Zoe is a coming-of-age drama about a Tess, a 16-year-old artist ( Stranger Things ' Sadie Sink) who believes she's responsible for her little sister's death. The film explores how tragedy changes us so that we see our lives in two parts: "before" the loss and "after."…

Positive Messages

Themes of family, love, grief, guilt, resilience, and second chances. To move on from a tragedy, you may need to temporarily create some distance.

Positive Role Models

An estranged, unemployed father is depicted against stereotype: When his daughter needs him, he's there, and he shows he always has been. But he doesn't rise above the choices that created the estrangement in the first place. An economically disadvantaged teen who's described as "trouble" is depicted with emotional and intellectual depth, but he ultimately reinforces that label.

Diverse Representations

Interracial romance in which skin color is never an issue. A teen experiences two very different worlds based on economic status: Kids from her rich, predominantly White school are portrayed as gossipy and mean, while Black teens from the less affluent part town are depicted as hardworking. But it's also suggested that every male in the latter community is selling or buying drugs. A Black teen who's described by others as "trouble" is depicted with a rich inner life, and it's shown that there's far more to him than some may presume based on his circumstances. The film was directed by a woman.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Brief images of TV coverage of the Twin Towers burning on 9/11. Off camera, a small child is struck and killed by a car; the plot follows the emotional distress of the loss.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

In two scenes, sex is implied situationally, including that a male character isn't wearing shirts. Kissing. Flirting. Burgeoning romance.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes "ass," "a--hole," "bitch," "d--k," "goddamn," "hell," "pissed," and "s--t." Exclamations "Oh my God!" and "Jesus!"

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teens smoke pot and make comments that it "heightens who you really are" and "makes you smart." Likable characters sell drugs. The choice to sell marijuana, at a time when it's illegal, is described in positive terms. Drug overdose. Drinking throughout, including by a minor with the knowledge and apparent permission of a parent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dear Zoe is a coming-of-age drama about a Tess, a 16-year-old artist ( Stranger Things ' Sadie Sink ) who believes she's responsible for her little sister's death. The film explores how tragedy changes us so that we see our lives in two parts: "before" the loss and "after." With her family mired in grief, Tess flees to the home of her estranged father, Nick ( Theo Rossi ), who's perpetually down on his luck but up with his attitude. He offers a counter-stereotypical take on the "deadbeat dad" cliche: He's broke because he doesn't believe in working for "the man," but he's delighted to get the chance to be a hands-on parent. That said, he does allow the underage Tess to drink beer. He also orders her to stay away from Jimmy (Kweku Collins), the boy next door, but she doesn't listen, and soon, they bond through his sneaking in through her window and teaching her to smoke pot, telling her it "heightens who you truly are" and "makes you smarter." The teens kiss, and it's implied they have sex. Language can be coarse ("bitch," "s--t"), and some characters who sell drugs are presented in a positive light. The central tragedy takes place on Sept. 11, 2001, and there are images of the Twin Towers burning. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

This is great for preteens and teen’s etc.

What's the story.

In DEAR ZOE, following the car accident death of her little sister on Sept. 11, 2001, Zoe, 16-year-old Tess ( Sadie Sink) tries to escape her grief by moving in with her estranged father, Nick ( Theo Rossi) . Moving from the suburbs of Pittsburgh to the scrappy town of Braddock, Tess hopes that a change of scenery will offer a chance to heal.

Is It Any Good?

This drama serves up meaty discussion topics but doesn't really dig in to the questions those topics raise. For instance, when a mass tragedy like 9/11 happens, are the lives of others who also happened to die on that day forgotten? Does living or working in an affluent area make you "safe"? If someone just barely scraping by sells drugs to survive, is that wrong, and does that make them a "bad" person? And what makes someone a good parent?

While it could be understood that narrator Tess is a teen who's just living her life, with deeper analysis reserved for her future self, that doesn't fully translate for teen audiences. The story is told through the portal of Tess' journal, a tool intended for self-reflection. So if Tess isn't having these thoughts or realizations, teen viewers won't, either. While Sink does her job of relaying what's on the page, the directing, somehow, doesn't offer viewers an understanding of what's going on with Tess in between the lines. Audiences might understandably expect some sort of deeper message to sink their teeth into -- like how can you process grief and find a way to move on? That opportunity, too, is left on the table.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Tess moves through the stages of grief. Does the way loss is represented in Dear Zoe feel realistic?

How do you think the movie's characters might be "labeled" in the real world, and how do these characters compare? How do they undermine stereotypes?

Does Dear Zoe glamorize underage drinking and drug use? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 4, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : November 4, 2022
• Cast : Sadie Sink , Theo Rossi , Kweku Collins
• Director : Gren Wells
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Female writers
• Studio : Freestyle Releasing
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters , Brothers and Sisters
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some teen marijuana use
• Last updated : February 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Screen Rant

Dear zoe review: wells’ sincere tear-jerker struggles narratively [sdiff].

Director Gren Wells crafts a tender, yet narratively unbalanced film that accentuates the gift that is Sadie Sink’s talent.

Sadie Sink has shown that she is a force to be reckoned with over the last five years. From her first appearance as Max Mayfield on Netflix’s Stranger Things to her most recent acclaimed performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale , the young actress shows no limits to where her talents can take her. Sadie’s latest show-stopping performance sees her bearing the heavy emotional weight of the loss of a loved one. Based on the 2005 American novel of the same name, Dear Zoe captures a sincere glimpse of grief when the surrounding world deals with its own problems. Director Gren Wells crafts a tender, yet narratively unbalanced film that accentuates the gift that is Sadie Sink’s talent.

A year after her family suffers an unimaginable loss, Tess DeNunzio (Sink) struggles to overcome her tremendous grief. Unable to heal as her family appears to be doing, she pens a heartfelt letter to her dead little sister Zoe. In it, Tess reflects on what she has lost and her resistance towards recovery. When nothing seems to be working, she turns to her estranged father Nick DeNunzio (Theo Rossi) and stays with him for several weeks. There, Tess finds love and support in surprising ways, giving her hope for a new-found journey of emotional restoration.

Related: Sadie Sink Battles Heartbreaking Grief In Dear Zoe Trailer

Dear Zoe provides modest insight into grief and guilt for a 15-year-old girl who is still learning to exist in a hectic world. Interestingly enough, the film takes place one year after the September 11 attacks , in which various sides to humanity were put on full display. While the feature takes place during the 2001-2002 time frame, not much outside several call-back videos to the tragedy helps to shape the period. Yet, that aspect gave screenwriters Marc Lhormer and Melissa Martin an advantage to put the focus on Tess and her emotional journey. Despite everything going on in the world, these events amount to lesser importance for Tess when personal tragedy strikes.

Though Wells frames Tess’s growth as happening in real time, the pacing of the story can inhibit viewers from being able to fully understand the toll her loss has taken on her. Viewers rarely catch a glimpse of Tess pre-tragedy, and it’s difficult to tell who she is as a teenager. As a result, it’s hard to rationalize her reactions and responses to events, forcing audiences to feel disconnected despite being a reasonably relatable story for anyone who has experienced loss. Ultimately, it all comes down to the wasted opportunity to put forth a powerful and poignant effort about how grief and guilt can change a person over time.

Within the script, there are also missed opportunities to show how tackling grief head-on enables a connection to the person who has passed. In Dear Zoe , the ounces of happiness Tess does get to experience tend to come from others, as she avoids her grief altogether. It’s an interesting message to send, but in these moments, Sadie Sink gives an emotionally-driven and nuanced performance, proving she can hold her own next to seasoned veterans. Theo Rossi is also exceptional . In nearly every scene, Rossi performs with affecting grace and delivers a richly impressive performance with such a comforting and calming presence. It will be incredibly easy for audiences to become invested in everything he does onscreen. If nothing else, the entire cast propels Wells’ feature as one to watch for the performances alone.

Gren Wells’ latest feels sincere, and she commits to a script where the strengths lie in the connections between its characters. Though there is potential lost when it comes to revealing intricate details about grief and guilt, Lhormer and Martin’s script enables Sink and Rossi to take full emotional control of the project. They deliver tender performances capable of stealing the hearts of its viewers who have experienced loss and found solace in reconnecting with family, leading to tear-jerking moments that will last throughout the film. It's a genuine effort despite its limitations, and it’s certainly worth a watch.

Next: She Said Review: Conflicting Yet Important Film With Great Performances [SDIFF]

Dear Zoe showed at the 2022 San Diego Film Festival. The film will open in limited theaters November 4. It is 94 minutes and rated R for some teen marijuana use.

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