‘The Assessment’ Movie: Parallels for Queer Intended Parents

Watching a movie where you have no idea what it is about is the best.

My husband and I are on our first journey to fatherhood through IVF and surrogacy, and we had no idea that the movie ‘The Assessment’ is about a not so distant, dystopian future where becoming parents for anyone is remarkably similar to the process for queer intended parents (IPs) today.

In this BabyMoon Family article, I want to discuss the movie (warning:  spoilers ahead), and share how watching it with my husband made us both think about and discuss our own journey to parenthood.

We were fortunate to see the movie at the 35th annual Stockholm Film Festival, where the audience was more than excited to see a new Alicia Vikander movie.  (There is nothing Swedes love more than a Swedish person who has become famous in America).  As a Marvel nerd, I am also a big fan of Elizabeth Olsen, and so with my free popcorn in hand, I was excited to watch this film.

The story is about a couple, Mia (played by Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (played by Himesh Patel) who are a successful pair of scientists and elite members of society who desperately want a child.  We learn early on that due to global warming, humanity now lives in an environmentally protected dome.  Because of this, the unnamed State decides who can have children.  

The entire population is kept sterile through a daily, free medication, which also serves to prevent aging and disease.  Therefore, the only way a couple can have children is ‘ex-utero’ or through gestation in an artificial uterus or womb.  Interestingly, the movie does show a same sex female couple with a child, and although not explicit, the characteristics of the child suggest she is the genetic offspring of both parents, which would indicate that in this future world, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is also a possibility.  

As an aside, I have previously written BabyMoon Family articles on the current science of artificial wombs (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/artificial-womb-pod-generation) and IVG (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/in-vitro-gametogenesis), which you should check out if you are interested to see how close we are to these forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART).

The movie centers around the ‘assessor,’ (played by Alicia Vikander) who comes to live with the couple for 7 days, and proceeds to challenge them with child-like behaviors to test their ability to parent.  These tests are insane, but they do represent some possible, albeit extreme, situations in parenting:  Trying to get a child to eat; staying up all night to build a complicated toy; having a dinner party with an unruly toddler; and leaving a child unattended to have her almost drowned, destroy your life’s work, and set the house on fire.   

Through this week of ‘hell,’ our intended parents find themselves asking questions such as:

• Will I be a good parent?

• Do I really want to be a parent?

• What will have to change in my life in order to be a parent?

• Will my partner be a good parent?

These questions, and the time to really contemplate them, are perhaps the most striking similarity between the movie and present day queer IPs.

There are other similarities as well.  The ‘elite’ nature of IPs in ‘The Assessment’ is similar to queer IPs today.  Given the complexity and cost of undergoing ART, queer IPs have to have significant emotional and financial resources to complete the journey.  This is similar to the couple in ‘The Assessment,’ who are applauded early in the movie for being in the top 0.01% of socioeconomic and societal status.  Like the movie, having children for queer people is still a rarity and something that is out of reach for many in the LGBTQ+ community.

However, the duration of the journey and the questions that come up during the process are what was most intriguing to my husband and me.  We have been on our journey for over a year, and before that, we were researching and discussing how we wanted to go about having children for about another year.  This time has led us to have many conversations with ourselves, each other, and our therapists about what being a parent means to us, the type of life we want to have, and the type of life we want to give our child.  

While straight couples can and often do this when they are planning to have children, this is not always the case.  People get pregnant, and then the couple are left with a little under 9 months to prepare.  This leaves little time and space to ask questions similar to queer IPs or the actors in ‘The Assessment.’  

Sometimes, given the length of our own journey, I feel like this ‘rushed’ approach would be better in some ways.  It’s always good to question and truly decide what you want, but similar to the extreme nature of testing in ‘The Assessment,’ sometimes I believe the years and years it takes queer IPs to become parents is too much.  It is a long journey.  I know that means we want it that much more, but, as in the movie, sometimes it doesn’t work out.

At the end of their assessment period, Alicia Vikander’s character informs the couple they have been unsuccessful in their application.  Her decision is immediate and final, and there is nothing this elite couple can do to change her or the State’s mind.  

This is similar for queer IPs and ART.  Some things, in fact many things, are out of your control, and you are confronted with these limitations throughout the process.  How healthy is/are your sperm/eggs?  How many eggs did you get during the retrieval?  How many viable embryos do you have?  How many chances until the gestational carrier (GC) gets pregnant?  The ultimate finality is you run out of time and/or money and are unable to have a child, or, in the case of Italy, it is no longer legally possible to have a child through surrogacy (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/italy-attacks-surrogacy-rainbow-families).

This final scenario, the irrevocable ‘no’ decision,’ is what the movie addresses.  Learning that no couple in the last 6 years has passed the assessment because the State doesn’t actually want any more humans in a dome full of adults who never die, Elizabeth Olsen’s character leaves the security and safety of the dome and returns to the ‘old world,’ facing a shortened but much freer life.  Her ex-partner embraces the virtual world he has built with a tactile VR child and VR replacement of his ex-wife.  

Similarly, I feel like my husband and I would each have extreme changes in our lives if we were to be unsuccessful in our pursuit of parenthood.  We would have to reassess what we want out of life, and how we would go about achieving this without children.

At the end of the movie, my husband and I had a great chat over dinner about how the film made us each feel as IPs going through ART.  We recognized all these similarities and our own challenges with the journey, and we came to the same conclusion we have for the last several years:  We want this, and we believe in ourselves and each other as future parents.  

It felt like this movie was yet another hurdle and mental confirmation that we want this, and that we are more excited than anything to continue.