SCREEN | Elizabeth Olsen Observes 'The Assessment'

"Because this society needs people who know what it is to love a child."

Magnolia Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios

The appealing trio of Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander, and Himesh Patel star in French music video director Fleur Fortuné's discomforting sci-fi chamber drama, The Assessment, about a vaguely dystopian near-future with strict rules around parenthood. Vikander plays an "assessor" who must evaluate Olsen and Patel's couple and their potential viability of raising a child over the course of seven long days.

Scripted by Dave Thomas, Nell Garfath-Cox, and John Donnelly, The Assessment stretches its heightened message about no prospective parent ever possibly being ready or prepared to have children taken to extreme lengths as a natural metaphor for fertility, female bodily autonomy, and ultimately self-determination. Vikander, a relatively new mother herself, clearly relished recreating the comical absurdities of children and their unpredictabilities, particularly acting out as a troublesome toddler having a tantrum.

The act of reproduction expressed in a world where aging and death are no longer concerns makes its conception of modern parenthood seem all the more trivial. The Assessment's refreshingly lo-fi production of its high-concept premise makes for an intriguing backdrop for its effective authoritarian world-building. Fortuné's eye for design propels the invasive, state-controlled oppression of natural biological processes into a twisted quest for defiant worthiness.

The Assessment will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in Canada starting May 8th and is available through video on demand in the U.S.


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