Jealousy Short-Circuits a Promising Premise

Read Time:7 Minute, 38 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Perfect Lover (Personhood)
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Genre: Science Fiction, Drama, Romance, Thriller
Year: 2025, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: Richard Jordan
Writer: Richard Jordan
Cast: Elliot Harris, Agathe Levi, Alan Emrys, Ryan Lee Scott, Henry Berry, Jenna Callaghan
Where to Watch: available October 27, 2026; pre-order your copy here: www.moviezyng.com

RAVING REVIEW: Spain’s Costa del Sol seems like a miserable place to feel left out. The sunshine, comfortable surroundings, and promise of an active social life offer little relief when everyone else appears to have access to something you can’t reach. THE PERFECT LOVER, also released as PERSONHOOD, places its lonely protagonist in that environment and gives him a technological solution to his isolation. The setting immediately contrasts his circumstances with his emotional life, though the film struggles to make his company worth keeping for 97 minutes.

Waylen, played by Elliot Harris, lives with a physical disability and a deep suspicion that nobody will genuinely want him. He purchases Gala, an advanced companion robot played by Agathe Levi, hoping to replace the intimacy missing from his life. She arrives prepared to meet his needs, but her willingness creates another problem. If affection is part of the purchase, he can’t trust it as proof that he’s lovable.

That contradiction gives Richard Jordan’s film a useful starting point. Waylen wants a partner who won’t reject him, then resents the conditions that make rejection unlikely. A more sophisticated product can't necessarily fix his dissatisfaction. He’s brought his existing fears into a new relationship and expects Gala to resolve them, even when his demands conflict with the purpose for which she was created.

The trouble is that spending time with Waylen quickly becomes exhausting. His insecurity repeatedly turns outward, leaving Gala responsible for absorbing his frustration and soothing it. An unpleasant protagonist can support an excellent film, especially when the writing investigates the consequences of his behavior. Here, the balance between understanding his loneliness and examining how he treats others remains unstable. His pain receives plenty of attention, while the damage he causes doesn’t always receive equal dramatic weight.

Harris doesn’t vary that frustration enough to make Waylen’s emotional life feel fully developed. Too many exchanges return to the same register of grievance, discomfort, and self-pity. The character has understandable reasons to struggle with intimacy, but understanding them doesn’t automatically make each interaction revealing. After a while, we’re being reminded of the problem rather than learning anything new about the man experiencing it.

His disability deserves more careful consideration than a simple explanation for his isolation. Physical differences can affect how someone is treated without determining their temperament, their romantic future, or their ability to care for another person. THE PERFECT LOVER places those subjects close together but doesn’t always distinguish them clearly enough. Waylen needs a personality beyond his unhappiness, including interests and habits that make him feel like someone who exists outside the relationship being tested.

Gala is the more compelling presence, and Levi gives the film its strongest reason to keep watching. Her measured delivery and controlled physical behavior suggest she's working within a set of instructions without reducing every exchange to an obvious robot routine. She has to remain credible as an artificial companion while also leaving room for us to question the assumptions that come with that description. It’s a demanding assignment, and she handles the competing requirements more effectively than the screenplay handles hers.

The story has an especially frustrating imbalance. It depends so much on Gala while limiting the attention paid to her experience. Waylen’s doubts set the terms of their conversations, and her responses become material for evaluating his emotional progress. Yet her position raises questions that deserve their own space. Being expected to offer affection, patience, sexual availability, and reassurance makes her treatment relevant well before anyone settles the question of consciousness.

The film’s alternate title, PERSONHOOD, points toward that broader issue. Recognizing someone as a person carries obligations that don’t disappear when their desires become inconvenient. The more Gala is presented as capable of thought and feeling, the harder it becomes to accept a relationship organized around ownership. Jordan brings that conflict into view, but the dialogue often argues it more convincingly than the developing relationship shows.

Conversations about programming and free will offer some substance. Human behavior is also shaped by influences people don’t choose, making the distinction between an artificial response and a supposedly independent human one less straightforward than Waylen wants it to be. That’s a reasonable subject for this story to explore. The exchanges feel less engaging when the characters sound like they’re presenting opposing positions instead of responding to something emotionally urgent between them.

A sharper version of the film might’ve allowed those ideas to emerge through smaller disagreements. Choosing how to spend an afternoon, declining an invitation, or expressing an unwanted preference can reveal plenty about whether a relationship permits independence. THE PERFECT LOVER tends to reach for larger declarations, which makes its philosophical concerns more explicit without necessarily making them more persuasive. The everyday experience of sharing a life remains less developed than the debate surrounding it.

Then Waylen’s brother Anders arrives, and the film gives itself a more conventional source of conflict. Alan Emrys supplies the confidence Waylen lacks, immediately changing how the brothers occupy a room and interact with Gala. The resentment between them has potential, especially when charm becomes another way to assert superiority. Unfortunately, Anders increasingly functions as a device for provoking trouble rather than a convincing person with his own complicated relationship to his brother.

His involvement also draws attention to a rivalry less interesting than Gala’s situation. The brothers have reasons to resent each other, but their conflict repeatedly makes her the object through which that resentment is expressed. This film asks us to consider her individuality while spending substantial time on the men’s competing interests. That tension needs more scrutiny than it gets, especially once jealousy starts driving the plot.

Jordan’s restrained approach to the near-future setting fits the material better. The world remains recognizable, with the companion technology introduced into otherwise ordinary surroundings. No parade of futuristic inventions is needed when the consequences of one purchase can sustain the premise. The domestic scale keeps attention on behavior, and the location gives the film a more distinct look than another anonymous house filled with screens and blue lighting.

Visual restraint, however, puts greater pressure on the conversations and performances. When several scenes return to similar doubts without substantially changing the relationship, the limited setting starts to feel restrictive. The film needs each encounter to adjust our understanding of the people involved. Too often, it confirms what’s already apparent, leaving stronger ideas underdeveloped and less dramatically useful.

The later movement toward thriller territory doesn’t solve that problem. Escalating the brothers’ conflict adds incident, but the emotional groundwork isn’t strong enough to support every shift in behavior. Important changes arrive with too little preparation, and the film asks for acceptance before it establishes motivation. Its uncertainty about how to resolve these relationships feels less productive than the uncertainty surrounding Gala herself.

I kept returning to Levi’s performance because she gives Gala a degree of composure that the film around her lacks. There’s something uncomfortable about watching the most attentive person in a room treated as the one whose feelings require proof. THE PERFECT LOVER finds worthwhile material in that situation, then repeatedly allows Waylen’s dissatisfaction and Anders’ interference to crowd it out. By the end, I wanted to spend less time hearing what the brothers needed from Gala and more time discovering what she wanted for herself.

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[photo courtesy of MOVIE ZYNG, AV ENTERTAINMENT, VANTAGE MEDIA]

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