SCREEN | Elizabeth Olsen Observes 'The Assessment'

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

Magnolia Pictures / ShivHans Pictures

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 utopian near-future with strict rules around parenthood. Vikander plays an "assessor" who must judge 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 wears 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 and is available through video on demand in the U.S.


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