TIFF Review: ‘The Assessment’ is an Inventive and Searing Take on the Challenges of Parenting

The issue of the government’s control over a woman’s body is quite a topic of controversy in the United States at the moment, and rightfully so since there are (fortunately) no laws about who can and can’t have children. Regulating who can have children is something that does happen elsewhere, and has occurred both in the past and in many imagined futures. Fleur Fortuné’s feature directorial debut The Assessment takes that idea a step further, showcasing the appallingly intimate process of a couple being interviewed for their suitability to become parents.

Virginia (Alicia Vikander) arrives at the home of Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) and explains what her role as an assessor is. She will stay with them for seven days and conduct a series of conversations and scenarios to test them. They’ll be notified immediately if they fail, and her decision is final. What begins as a series of shockingly invasive questions quickly turns into wholly inappropriate scenarios where Virgina is alternately behaving like a temperamental child to gauge the reactions of the would-be parents and provoking sexual desire to gauge the strength of their marriage.

This very intriguing film envisions a minimalist future where Mia and Aaryan live in a house alone surrounded by a bleak and empty landscape. Mia operates a greenhouse and Aaryan works in a simulated space where they’re both able to try to recreate resources that are no longer available. There’s talk of the Old World, where Mia’s mother was banished for being a dissident, and few know of what things are like there or were like before now. Mia and Aaryan just know what they want, greeting Virgina with, “I know everyone says this, but we would make really good parents.” Her expression, accompanying by a confirmation that yes, everyone does say that, speaks volumes, and she’s hardly going to take that kind of sentiment at face value.

Like Virginia, this film pushes the limits as each day of the evaluation goes by. When Mia and Aaryan start to have sex in a small guest bed after Virginia requests to sleep in their room since it has a less springy mattress, they are horrified to see her watching them from the open door. She has to monitor everything, she says, and they’re required to be themselves. When she starts throwing food and imitating toddler behavior, it’s very interesting, and unsettling, to see how quickly Mia snaps and then how both she and Aaryan adjust to this extremely peculiar reality where a grown woman is expecting them to treat her as if she’s their young child.

This film is exceptionally well-cast. Vikander in particular is suited to this challenge following her previous performance in Ex Machina, and she’s the most unreadable of the trio. Dressed in a conservative outfit that also indicates a childishness of its own, she segues seamlessly from reminding them that she’s who she’s always been to behaving like an infant, most certainly taking the role of the assessor too far in wreaking havoc and physical destruction on everything the couple holds dear as she pushes them to the edge of their sanity.

Olsen, who played a mother going through tremendous grief in WandaVision, is magnetic here as someone who isn’t eager to apologize for how she reacts instinctively but knows how to repair the situation after taking a moment to process everyone’s role in it. It feels extremely genuine and works well opposite Patel, who makes Aaryan likeable and talented but also too prone to appeasing others, which doesn’t always serve him well. Brief appearances from Minnie Driver and Indira Varma are memorable in a spontaneous dinner party scene that serves as yet another test for the couple. This vision of the future is extremely inventive and imaginative, and while there’s plenty of comedy to be found in the ways these absurd tests are administered, this film proves truly resounding in its dark underbelly that isn’t easy to shake.

Movie Rating: 8/10

Awards Buzz: All three performers would be worthy of nominations for their performances. Vikander is already an Oscar winner and Olsen and Patel are Emmy nominees, but the likelihood of this genre fare getting a strong enough Oscar campaign to widely reach voters is unlikely.