In Fleur Fortuné’s haunting debut feature The Assessment (2024), the act of becoming a parent transforms from a deeply personal choice into a state-regulated nightmare. Set in a near-future world ravaged by climate collapse, the film interrogates the ethics of reproduction, the weight of societal judgment, and the fragile boundaries of humanity itself. Anchored by powerhouse performances from Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen, the film merges clinical sci-fi aesthetics with visceral emotional stakes, crafting a narrative that feels both eerily plausible and existentially unsettling.

A World on the Brink: Climate Collapse and Reproductive Control

The film’s dystopian backdrop is painted with chilling efficiency. Decades of environmental degradation have rendered Earth barely habitable, leading governments to impose draconian measures to curb population growth. Parenthood is no longer a right but a privilege granted only to those who pass a grueling seven-day evaluation—a process overseen by impassive bureaucrats like Vikander’s nameless "Assessor." This premise taps into real-world anxieties about climate-driven policy shifts, echoing debates around carbon rationing and eco-fascism. The sterile, minimalist setting—a remote house surveilled by drones and hidden cameras—mirrors the characters’ psychological entrapment, evoking comparisons to Ex Machina’s claustrophobic tension.

Fortuné’s world-building thrives in subtle details: rationed water supplies, genetically modified crops, and a social credit system that penalizes "irresponsible" life choices. These elements reflect contemporary fears of authoritarian overreach, particularly in societies grappling with ecological crises. The film’s vision of state-controlled reproduction recalls Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but with a chilling twist—the oppression here is framed as pragmatic survivalism, not religious dogma.

Performances: Humanity Under the Microscope

Alicia Vikander delivers a career-defining performance as the Assessor, a woman whose clinical detachment masks a labyrinthine moral ambiguity. Her interactions with Olsen’s character, Clara—a desperate wife yearning for motherhood—are masterclasses in unspoken power dynamics. Vikander’s measured cadence and piercing gaze weaponize silence, turning mundane questions about parenting philosophies into psychological warfare. In one pivotal scene, she dissects Clara’s childhood trauma with the precision of a surgeon, exposing how societal conditioning shapes parental fitness.

Elizabeth Olsen, meanwhile, embodies raw vulnerability. Her portrayal of Clara oscillates between fierce determination and paralyzing self-doubt, particularly as the assessment unearths buried fractures in her marriage to Tom (Himesh Patel). A standout sequence sees Clara tearfully recounting her mother’s death during a climate-driven famine—a moment that blurs the line between genuine confession and performative desperation. Patel’s understated performance as Tom, a man grappling with his own inadequacies, adds layers to the couple’s dynamic, revealing how societal pressures corrode intimacy.

Visual Language: Sterility and Subversion

The film’s production design is a character in itself. The assessment house—a stark, glass-walled structure surrounded by dead forests—serves as a metaphorical petri dish, isolating the couple from the decaying world outside. Cinematographer Maxence Lemonnier frames scenes through surveillance angles and distorted reflections, emphasizing the characters’ loss of autonomy. Cold blue tones dominate daytime sequences, while nighttime scenes are bathed in sickly amber, mirroring the couple’s escalating paranoia.

Fortuné’s background in theater shines through in tightly choreographed dialogues. A dinner table confrontation, shot in a single unbroken take, escalates from polite small talk to existential dread as the Assessor dissects Tom’s childhood trauma. The absence of a traditional score amplifies the tension; instead, the hum of surveillance equipment and the crunch of synthetic food underfoot become a disquieting symphony.

Themes: Reproductive Rights and the Illusion of Choice

At its core, The Assessment is a searing critique of neoliberal individualism. The state’s evaluation criteria—financial stability, emotional resilience, environmental consciousness—parody modern parenting discourse, reducing human relationships to quantifiable metrics. A harrowing montage juxtaposes Clara’s childhood home videos with clinical assessment footage, asking: Can love be measured? Is parenthood a biological instinct or a socially engineered privilege?

The film also grapples with anti-natalist philosophy. Flashbacks to Clara’s work in a refugee camp—where she witnessed children dying of heatstroke—haunt her decision to procreate. These sequences, rendered in grainy handheld footage, force viewers to confront the ethical paradox of bringing life into a dying world. The Assessor’s final verdict, delivered with bureaucratic indifference, underscores the film’s central thesis: In a society obsessed with sustainability, human desire becomes the ultimate liability.

Cultural Resonance: Echoes of Modern Anxieties

While rooted in sci-fi, The Assessment mirrors contemporary debates. The rise of “parental licensing” rhetoric in eco-conscious circles and China’s erstwhile one-child policy loom large over the narrative. A chilling scene where Clara debates the ethics of genetic screening (“Would you eliminate a gene linked to climate denial?”) directly engages with CRISPR technology controversies.

The film’s Eurocentric lens—Vikander’s Assessor embodies Scandinavian efficiency, while Clara and Tom read as ambiguously Western—invites criticism of its narrow demographic focus. Yet this choice amplifies the story’s universality; climate collapse, the film argues, will render all borders obsolete, reducing human diversity to a homogenized struggle for survival.

Legacy and Contradictions

The Assessment stumbles only in its third act, where a rushed climax leans too heavily on genre tropes. A subplot involving a rebellious underground movement—hinted at through cryptic news broadcasts—feels underdeveloped, a missed opportunity to explore systemic resistance. Nonetheless, the film’s ambiguous ending lingers, refusing easy catharsis. As Clara stares into a nursery camera, her face a mosaic of hope and terror, viewers are left to ponder: Is this a triumph of human spirit or the birth of a new oppression?

In an era of climate fatalism and algorithmic governance, The Assessment emerges as essential viewing. It challenges audiences to question not just the ethics of reproduction, but the very systems we design to arbitrate life’s value. As the credits roll, one truth becomes inescapable: The future it depicts is already here, lurking in our carbon taxes, fertility apps, and the quiet desperation of a generation wondering if they’ve already failed their unborn children.