Soulmates (2021) – Amazon

What if you could take a test that would reveal with 100% accuracy your perfect soulmate; the one person in all the world you were most meant to love and who would most love you?

Would you take that test? Would you take it if you were single? Would you take it if you were married, but the flames of love for your spouse had dimmed over the years to an occasional flicker? Would you take the test if you were in a happy and fulfilling relationship, but wondered how much better things might be with your perfect match?

Scientific search for love

These ‘what ifs’ form the heart of Soulmates, a new six-part anthology of short films on Amazon Prime. Set in a near future where Soul Connex have developed a simple and painless test which identifies your soul particle and finds your perfect match, each episode holds up a mirror which reflects back to us what we think about love, commitment, the search for happiness, and the place of science in our 21st-century lives. And as you would expect from one of the co-writers of Black Mirror, the stories unsettle the viewer and each has a sting in the tail.

Through the six stories we see how ‘the test’ persuades people that finding a self-fulfilling loving relationship can be reduced to scientific certainty. In ‘Watershed’, Nikki and Franklin are happily married with two young children until, at a dinner party, Nikki realises that the other couples are all Soulmate matches and that she is the odd one out. Like the questions the serpent of Genesis whispers to Eve, the very existence of the test sows seeds of discontent within Nikki that previously weren’t there, and soon the strain of ‘what if’ begins to make her question whether her marriage to Franklin is as good as it seems. Might there be something better waiting for her if only she took the test? In another episode we see Libby and Adam incorporate both their soulmates (to Libby’s surprise her soulmate is a woman) into an already open marriage.

Cracks that appear

However, as each story unfolds, the mirror that Soulmates hold up to us also begins to show the cracks that appear when we reduce love to a scientific match that trumps our past promises, existing family relationships, and our own decision-making responsibility. We begin to wonder whether the desire to find true love might in fact be a narcissistic quest which accepts no barriers in the pursuit of personal happiness, and that scientific certainty might not deliver all that it promises. When Libby leaves Adam for her soulmate Miranda she discovers that Miranda can’t care for her in the way Adam did because of the childhood wounds Miranda carries from an overdependent mother. And in ‘Break on Through’, when shy teenager Kurt discovers his match has died in a car crash, the mental torture of ‘what if’ precipitates a descent into depression and attempted suicide. Later in a moment of honesty he admits that finding her dead was actually a relief because it took away the anxiety of having to be someone else’s perfect love.

Depth and meaning

Although the Soulmates stories don’t always plumb the depths of the issues they raise, they do prompt us to consider that love does not ‘magically’ come into being when we find our soulmate, but rather develops with time as we do the work of loving. Although Nikki and Franklin end their marriage to embark on new soulmate relationships, when Nikki visits Franklin to pick up the kids for the weekend there is a sense of longing for something they had that might not have been perfect but had real depth and meaning from their 15 years together.

Soulmates is right to see love as the central experience of human life because we are made in the image of the God who is love (1 John 4:16). But what Soulmates helpfully shows us through the cracks is that love is a lot bigger than the feelings we get from being with our perfect match. Love is also a choice and an action, a commitment and a promise. Ultimately love is not centred on the self, but is part of that strange dynamic of other-centeredness in which we need to be prepared to lose ourselves to find true love (Luke 9:24).