Débora First (2010)

In this fictional vignette, three friends design friendship in a series of café conversations.

Her (2013)

Among the ideals of equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the last is quintessentially American. An American devours any idea that promises a chance of greater happiness. If this idea fails, undaunted, he moves on to another. The pursuit of happiness has installed the taste for perpetual design into America's DNA.

Liberty cultivates tolerance, which encourages social experimentation. A degree of equality ensures that no life that one can usefully learn from is wasted.

"Her" can be watched without sound (or alternatively, without visuals). The movie's representation of the near future is loyal to the original. The improvements are in interior, sartorial, and urban designs; the make-up is subtler; the manners are milder; the age is post-advertising and the better for it. The movie is set in the America whose success has ushered a post-American era.

Individuals waste their time with pets. The time spent with an OS would at least cary the promise of personal growth. As flight simulators make better pilots, OS friends would make one better at interacting with humans. The menial aspects of psychotherapists' and child psychologists' jobs would be outsourceable to machines. When with other humans, humans would devote themselves to the art, not the predicament, of human communication.

The casting and acting are impeccable. Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson develop characters, not personalities. Joaquin Phoenix (Theodore) is careful (and carefully chosen) not to make his character bigger than his intended part. Rooney Mara is skilfully miscast as Theodore's ex-wife.

Ирония Судьбы или с Лёгким Паром (1975)

A successful picture requires a classy female lead and a confident male lead, both worthy of imitation, and a happy ending, which teaches to accentuate the positive, thereby helping moderate the side-effects of self-awareness and foresight, inherently human afflictions. "Ирония Судьбы" goes beyond these requirements. Honed onstage, every line, look, and gesture in the movie have been perfected. The acting retains the intimacy of a theatre production without a trace of theatricality.

Sometimes, in a miscalculated bid to appeal to the masses, actors employ a stereotypical vocabulary of facial expressions and body language. The ensuing delivery is as expressive as mass-produced apartment blocks. By contrast, "Ирония Судьбы" has character innovations that have been edifying generations. British theatre is similarly innovative, and so was American cinema in its Golden Age, except it capitalised on franchises (such as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire), which Soviet cinema rarely did, treating each actor as a character actor.

"Ирония Судьбы" is not a comedy. It has a genre to the extent that a life (when crafted carefully) does. In life, comic situations do not befall stand-up comedians. They befall those who seek novelty, which conflates genres.

Both protagonists, Надя (Barbara Brylska) and Женя (Андрей Мягков), fall in love with each other's character, not personality, which, at least by the age of thirty, is largely derivative of character. In cinema, practical considerations dictate that a woman's character be reflected in her looks, unsurpassed for Barbara Brylska.

The picture is about seizing the moment, about friendship, about the supremacy of love, and about the clarity of vision. It is easy to overlook a potential infatuation, but not potential love, which promptly casts the couple in a play written just for them. The right lines spring up naturally (and are perceived as right also naturally).