A cheeky programming choice for February, when screens are awash with romance, this documentary essentially observes a marriage bleeding out via so many tiny cuts that even the protagonists are barely aware of what’s going on. Susanna Cappellaro, making her directing debut, is better known as an actor who has appeared in films by Tim Burton and Peter Strickland. When she turns the camera on herself, her natural warmth, humour and intelligence come across well. That makes her a welcome counterpoint to her prickly husband Scott Cohen, an American music industry executive who decides to have a compass attached to his body permanently so that a little haptic buzz will always tell him which way is true north.

Scott sees this as his chance to become a kind of cyborg with a new sixth sense few others on the planet have. He is a much more circumspect, guarded character than his wife but by slow degrees one starts to sense that he is a raging narcissist, much like certain kinds of wealthy executives who want to have brain chips or life-extending surgeries because just getting a piercing or a tattoo isn’t cool any more. I confess that as the film went on I came to loathe Scott and longed for Susanna to dump him because clearly she could do a lot better.

As a documentary about the world of body modification, it’s somewhat superficial and doesn’t really get under the skin, as it were, of what motivates people to pursue these interventions. We hardly even find out what motivates Scott or later Susanna herself, who opts to have pointless magnets inserted into her fingertips just to see what it’s like. But the slow collapse of their relationship is oddly compelling – if a bit sad – to watch.

• My Husband, the Cyborg is on digital platforms from 14 February.