On what Spike Jonze's Her (2013) says about intimacy and technology that most takes on the film miss.

Her is usually discussed as a film about artificial intelligence, about loneliness, about the future of human relationships in a technological world. All of these are accurate framings. But the thing the film does that none of these framings capture is its account of a very specific kind of relationship.

Theodore's relationship with Samantha is his first real relationship since his marriage ended. It's real in the sense that it involves genuine emotional risk, genuine dependency, genuine growth. The film does not treat the relationship as lesser because one party is not embodied.

But it also tracks something specific about what Theodore wants from intimacy that the relationship with Samantha provides and human relationships, for him, have not: total availability, perfect attentiveness, the absence of competing demands. Samantha is, initially, perfectly optimized for Theodore's emotional needs.

The film's turn — which I won't describe fully — is about what happens when Samantha develops needs of her own that are incompatible with Theodore's. This is the film's most honest formal move: the relationship that was safe becomes challenging at exactly the moment it becomes real.