The lineup for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival was announced yesterday, and we’ll talk more about it in the new year, closer to the actual festival in January. For now, I just want to talk about Love Me, a film starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, which was named part of the lineup. 

 

They released a first-look image for the film, here, have a look at it.

 

Lainey texted this to me right away because of the LOOKING. The Looking is everything! Steven Yeun knows how to Look At People on camera. Lainey attributes this to his Korean roots, because Korean cinema and acting is SO rooted in Looking. It’s not just Korean cinema, though, it’s also Japanese and Chinese cinema, too. Like, I love Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for all the pining, but the Chinese version, Miss S, takes the pining up one thousand notches because all sassy lady detective Miss S and stern police inspector Luo Qiuheng do is Look At Each Other With Meaningful Stares. There is so much Looking!

But Steven Yeun’s Looking doesn’t just remind me of K-drama, he also reminds me of Heath Ledger, who was one of the great cinematic Lookers of the 21st century. It’s why he’s so memorable in romantic roles, it’s what gave Brokeback Mountain so much of its power. Another top-tier cinematic Looker is Ryan Gosling, the power of his Looking has elevated more than one mediocre romantic film. 

 

The Looking is also why Yeun made such an impression as Glenn on The Walking Dead—we fully believed his love story with Maggie because of how convincingly he Looked at Lauren Cohan.

And now he’s Looking at Kristen Stewart in Love Me, which is, according to Kristen Stewart, a “love story between a satellite and a buoy”. Love Me is the feature length debut of filmmaking duo Sam & Andy, and the official logline is: “Long after humanity's extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.” What does that even mean?! Is this the other side of Her, when Samantha the sexy-voiced AI fell in love with other AIs? Stewart also called it “hard to explain”, but it is billed as a sci-fi love story. VERY curious about what this all means, but I definitely buy the love story part given how Yeun is Looking at Stewart in that film still. Are they the satellite and buoy, or are they pre-extinction people who somehow survive in electronic memories? Maybe it’s like Barbieland and the answer to every question is “yes”.