‍ WRITER’S NOTE

What happens when the woman who built a machine to take the risk out of love gets matched, at 98.7%, with the one man trying to prove her whole idea is a lie?

Lila Tran built EROS, a dating platform that promises the impossible: love without heartbreak, connection without guesswork, romance reduced to ten thousand readable variables. Mateo Reyes is the AI ethicist who has made it his mission to prove her wrong, to show that the one thing you cannot, and should not, quantify is the human heart. Then Lila's own algorithm does something cruel and perfect. It matches the two of them at 98.7% compatibility. The machine pairs its maker with its fiercest critic.

It was a pure joy to write: Miami, sharp and sun-drenched, a best friend who steals every scene, banter that snaps. But underneath the comedy is something I believe seriously. Lila didn't build EROS out of ambition. She built it out of grief. Her mother died before she could ever watch her daughter fall in love, and Lila, terrified of getting love wrong or missing it altogether, set out to engineer the uncertainty away. Mateo, it turns out, is hiding too. His philosophy is a more eloquent version of the same fear.

That's the real subject of the film: the very human wish to make love safe, to get a guarantee before we risk our heart, and the truth that there isn't one, and never was. The film ends on a status readout: match confirmed, volatility elevated, longevity unknown, confidence level: irrelevant. Because that's love. You don't get the certainty. You get the leap.

We live in an age that promises to optimize everything, including the heart. I wanted to write a comedy that gently insists the best thing about love is the one thing no algorithm will ever give you: the not-knowing, and choosing anyway.

— Leonard Tachmes, M.D.