Love me, love my Operating System

SOME TIME in the Los Angeles of the not-too-distant future, a man and his handheld device develop special feelings for each other - in the weird, wonderful world according to Spike Jonze, whose love story about a guy and his operating system seems almost normal.

Loneliness and longing are the pervasive moods in Her, a sensitive, satirical and thoroughly original film about the social condition and one man's search for the perfect mate. Written and directed by Jonze, Her is both an indictment of our current fascination with hi-tech personal devices - to the exclusion of almost everything else - and a sweet romance with a difference.

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) lives a sad, solitary existence, is permanently wistful and sustained by memories of a happier past. He stays in a cool modernist pad and earns a decent living by writing heartfelt online letters for others - but is an abject failure on the relationship front. He's going through a painful divorce with his childhood sweetheart and seems to relish wallowing in his own misery.