John Gallagher Jr. in The Heart Machine (FilmBuff)

It is inarguable that we have become increasingly fixated with technology. After endless hours of liking, commenting, tweeting, and texting, we must regularly remind ourselves that our interactions are more than just the pixels that separate us. By breaking down the digital walls and locating a real, live person on the other side of the keyboard, we find ways to distance ourselves from the mindless swiping of screens.

And yet, it’s often too easy to find contentment in the digital distance. In Zachary Wigon’s The Heart Machine, two lovelorn hipsters navigate the throes of a virtual romance alongside the fears of bringing it forth into reality. Like the onscreen lovers struggling with electronic flirtation, Wigon’s film boasts a mix of bottled energy, detached impassivity, and hasty potential.

The cast is certainly game. John Gallagher Jr., so adorably disarming in last year’s Short Term 12, plays Cody, a lonely freelance writer looking to make a romantic connection. Through the channels of a nondescript online dating site, he meets Virginia (House of Cards’ entrancing Kate Lyn Sheil), a frustrated book promoter who oscillates between the carnal euphoria of sex with strangers and the shielded comfort of a computer screen boyfriend. After just one Skype date, Cody and Virginia determine that they have tons in common and should totally “do this again”—the only problem is that he’s in Brooklyn and she’s in Berlin. At least, that’s what she says.

Though we are presented with the mystery of Virginia’s uncertain location at the outset, the secret is revealed to viewers early on. The heart of the narrative alternates between Cody’s suspicious investigation of her whereabouts and Virginia’s carefree abandonment of cyber monogamy. We watch as both make unpleasant choices and bestow selfish, unbecoming characteristics. Guided by Wigon’s composed direction, we crane our necks toward their inevitable crashing comeuppance.

In what plays like a fictionalized rendering of Catfish mixed with an ultra-low-rent version of The Conversation, The Heart Machine traverses the uncharted tracks of millennial romance. It asks why we often avoid interpersonal communication while suggesting that, when so much of our correspondence is based on the augmented reality of online profiles, our connections must therefore be fundamentally fragile. How can we really know each other when we choose—and prefer—to interact behind the sallow haze of a computer screen?

Wigon, an NYU film school graduate and film critic for The Village Voice, displays a sharp confidence as director and screenwriter. His depiction of love lost in the miscellany of Instagram filters and instant gratification is spot-on. The only misstep here is that in striving for specificity, he may unintentionally alienate much of his audience.

While this Brooklyn-based reviewer can readily relate to late nights in the East Village and the behemoth that is Bushwick, to others The Heart Machine may read as yet another entry in the mumblecore movement—a film made by hipsters, for hipsters. Yet when it could have veered off the tracks completely, it holds steady, boasting the hidden, untrodden potential of a blind date. I’d take that in-person awkwardness over a pixelated Skype session any day.