THE STORY – When a lovesick musician is given the wrong number for his dream girl, he teams up with a driven psychology student to find her. Together, they spark a hilarious campus-wide frenzy that tests their own hearts and ambitions along the way.
THE CAST – Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Prasanna Puwanarajah & Minnie Driver
THE TEAM – Alicia MacDonald (Director) & Rachel Hirons (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 110 Minutes
When romantic comedies peaked in 1989 with “When Harry Met Sally,” an abundance of stellar new additions followed. The film’s screenwriter, Nora Ephron, gave us a beloved 90s Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan double feature: “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.” The 90s and 2000s birthed several comfort classics, from “Waiting to Exhale” and “10 Things I Hate About You” to Hugh Grant highlights “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” There was something magical about rom-coms of this era. Since then, a lot of that alchemy got lost somewhere along the way. But as the current decade continues to prove, rom-coms have come back around. Gems including “Rye Lane,” “Fire Island,” “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” and most recently “Materialists” are brimming with authentic voices and fun chemistry. Most of all, there’s a keen curiosity about romantic attraction, and what love means today. British filmmaker on the rise, Alicia MacDonald, mostly fits the bill with her feature directorial debut, “Finding Emily.” It’s a thoughtful, joyous young love story that embraces and challenges genre expectations.
When it comes to finding love, there’s an optimist for every cynic, a hopeless romantic for every realist. “Finding Emily” explores these two sides of the same coin through a psychological lens. It’s summer term at Manchester City University, and sound engineer Owen (Spike Fearn) meets a girl known as Fairy Emily (Sadie Soverall) at a party. Their flirty meet-cute is the kind of moment when you find an exciting spark with someone, and it feels as though you’re the only two people in the world. Owen asks for her name and number, which she shares while being rushed off into the night by her friends. When he texts her the next morning and his messages don’t go through, he discovers her number is missing a digit.
The film’s opening moments speak to MacDonald’s dynamic direction and an excellent eye for chemistry between the actors, setting the tone of yearning for a missed connection. Driven by this magical night, with barely any information to go on, Owen embarks on a campus-wide search for Fairy Emily. His pursuit leads him to Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), an American psychology student with a scholarship on the line. Experiencing writer’s block for her thesis on romantic attachment being absurd and outdated, Emily discovers in Owen the case study she’s been looking for. She is fascinated by Owen’s desperation to find the “manic pixie dream girl” who lives as a projection in his mind. Determined to prove a link between romance and self-sabotage, Emily offers to help Owen on his search. Together, they navigate the emotional rollercoaster of modern love, with bar hopping and podcasts galore.
The narrative tension can be sensed from a mile away. As Owen becomes Emily’s social experiment, the social perception of him begins to change, and her involvement jeopardizes the impartiality of her own thesis. The tension accelerates in the second half, as both characters navigate through an increasingly messy turn of events. This is where the film’s screenwriting flaws mostly arise. In an underwhelming attempt to give Emily an introspective arc, Rachel Hirons’s script sways from clever and funny to cliched and shallow. Emily’s resolution builds toward an emotional gesture that feels slightly unearned and fizzles out with rushed development. While the second half loses charm, MacDonald’s direction makes it easy to feel intrigued and enchanted by Owen and Emily’s journey in the lead-up. She focuses on steady close-ups of the characters, and lingers on their conversations as they inhabit each setting. The university environment has a bustling energy that feels specific to coming-of-age, as the characters are still learning about themselves. The film also features a wonderful sequence on Canal Street, the heart of Manchester’s gay village, with lively bars and drag queen performances (including a fabulous cover of Scissor Sisters’s “Let’s Have a Kiki”). It’s a fun set piece that plants the seeds for a blossoming spark between Emily and Owen, and highlights Manchester as another character. Through backstreets, crowded pubs, and school hallways, we’re exploring this city through lived-in eyes.
The film puts a creative spin on moments that otherwise feel flat on paper. When Owen accidentally CC emails every Manchester City University student named Emily, this panicky scenario plays out with enjoyable dimension. The film incorporates abstract versions of each Emily as they react and respond to Owen’s message. Their distinctive insights speak to broader topics that “Finding Emily” makes attempts to engage with. The film questions what it means to be romantic in the modern age, putting Owen’s grand gestures up for debate through social media and how women are perceiving his behavior. Moments involving a “Broadcast Barbie” podcast and a group of “I Am Emily” protesters stand out. Still, the tone is inconsistent, so it’s unclear whether they are meant to play out for satirical effect. A more nuanced, meaningful conversation is at hand, but it ultimately gets lost.
There’s certainly an art to pulling off grand gestures in rom-coms. It’s an overused trope, and can cross the line into uncomfortable territory. When done well, however, they are charming declarations of love. Take Harry running to Sally on New Year’s Eve, wanting the rest of his life with her to start as soon as possible. Or Bridget Jones running after Mark Darcy in the snowy streets of London. How would the energy of a classic rom-com gesture from decades ago hold up in a digital age reality? MacDonald’s film works partly as a reaction to this question, treating Owen’s actions as a social experiment within the modern dating world. The script pokes fun at the grand gesture trope and uses it to clever advantage while also reflecting how we define modern love. The film also briefly ponders how Fairy Emily might feel about Owen’s quest to find her. He embarks on this all-consuming search without considering her experience of their first meeting. However, her character unfortunately isn’t given the nuance nor time to really dig deeper into this conflict.
Meet-cutes and grand gestures aside, “Finding Emily” crosses off the key ingredient that can make or break a rom-com: chemistry. Thankfully, Spike Fearn and Angourie Rice are delightful opposite each other. Fearn brings an instantly self-deprecating charm. He excels at conveying the delusional whirlwind of falling head over heels for someone at first sight. His sprightly, spontaneous energy contrasts with Emily’s more structured determination. While he defines love as a vibe, Emily professes love as a measure of study. Her thesis aims to argue that romance is a byproduct of human immaturity, and that romantic attachment puts us at the mercy of danger, an especially resonant note for women in the dating world. Rice brings wonderful nuance and grounded realism to a character who lacks written dimension. She and Fearn also bring enough charm to anchor a transformative romance, getting to the heart of why so many genre classics stand the test of time. At the core, it’s about two people learning their attitudes towards love.
Adding to the charming leads, the film has a stellar supporting cast that stands out with fun comedic timing and heart. While they don’t have much to work with on the page, they bring resonant explorations of Owen and Emily’s world outside of the central plot. For instance, we learn the extent to which grief has driven Owen to reconnect with Fairy Emily. The film features a moving scene between Owen and his brother, where they break into song on a car ride home. Through Emily’s best friend, Anna (an excellent and underused Cora Kirk), we learn that Emily is not over her situationship with Tristan (Timothy Innes), a character so clearly influenced by Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver role in the “Bridget Jones” films. The always-brilliant Minnie Driver is criminally underused as the university Dean, Emily Watkinson. The most endearing and entertaining standout is Prasanna Puwanarajah as Professor Westlake, who advises on the progression of Emily’s thesis throughout. He embodies dry British humor exceptionally well, and delivers some of the most memorable lines.
With “Finding Emily,” Alicia MacDonald makes an exciting mark not only within the rom-com genre, but in the film world as a first-time feature director. As exemplified through an episode of the underrated rom-com series, “Too Much,” MacDonald excels at heightening humor and heart in equal measure. What resonates most about her film, despite its chaotic handling, is how it reflects modern dating through sparkling chemistry between the two leads. There’s a yearning to experience something real amidst relationships that exist through filters. Owen’s romantic projection and Emily’s studied cynicism work as bookmarks for how the film challenges love in the digital age. “Finding Emily” may fizzle out with its final grand gesture, but the journey to get there ultimately wins you over, as the classic rom-coms do.
