Asymmetrical haircuts are the norm, no shade of neon is too bright, and synth pop rules the airwaves. But Harris has moved closer to the Cali shoreline and jumped ahead a decade: It’s 1987, and the beach town of San Junipero is a playground for telegenic young people eager to show off their most tubular fashions. Harris flexes that Netflix-funded production budget from the opening shot, a flashy long-take reminiscent of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights opener that peered at ’70s-period accoutrement in the San Fernando Valley. “San Junipero” offers a softer, more sensitive alternative to the usual black-hearted subject matter, turning the usual fixation with technology toward a warm, humanistic end. This third season of Black Mirror, the longest yet at a whopping six episodes, has used its wiggle room to flit a little more freely between genres, touching on horror (“ Playtest”), suspense (“ Shut Up and Dance”), speculative fiction (“ Nosedive”), police procedural (“ Hated in the Nation”), and sci-fi-inflected war (“ Men Against Fire”). These are the weighty questions that Charlie Brooker and director Owen Harris consider in “San Junipero,” a tenderhearted and lavishly produced romance that provides a nice tonic after the soul-crushing bleakness of the first three episodes. What is love worth? When we find such a rare and precious thing, what are we willing to sacrifice to keep it? Does giving yourself over to love require surrendering some small part of yourself? If that’s the case, is it really such a price to pay if the end result is eternal fulfillment? And, my god, is there any article of dated clothing that Mackenzie Davis can’t make work? Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Kelly, Mackenzie Davis as Yorkie.
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