Directed By Alicia MacDonald

Starring – Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Minnie Driver

The Plot – When lovesick musician, Owen (Fearn) is given the wrong number for his dream girl, he teams up with a driven psychology student (Rice) to find her. Together, they spark a hilarious campus-wide frenzy that tests their own hearts and ambitions along the way.

Rated PG-13 for sexual references, adult language, some crude material and drug references.

FINDING EMILY – Official Trailer [HD] – Only In Theaters August 28

POSITIVES

From the opening screen text conveying Sigmund Freud’s astute observation on love’s temporary psychosis over reality, it’s clear that Finding Emily is a smartly grounded and more psychologically profound romantic comedy than we’re typically used to in a recently dumbed down subgenre, and through Rachel Hirons’ script overcomes prejudicial preconception in an exploration that thematically takes us down some contemporarily relevant talking points, we receive an extensively elaborate outlining on modern dating that demands many thought-provoking conversations about the fallacious concepts of love at first sight, in turn cementing an uncynically sweet kind of experience that feels every bit entertainingly endearing as it does sociologically responsible. It receives this firm appraising as a result of not only tapping into the overbearing complexities of social media’s influence towards fueling an intrusive hate mob mentality, toxically inspired to lash out against anyone who doesn’t fit into the conventional mold of historically conceived romances, but beyond that challenges perception in the depths of instantaneous allure, in ways that threaten to compromise Owen’s own irrational quest for impossible love, a feat that becomes glaringly evident the longer that his emerging foundational friendship with Rice’s Emily permeates a predictable-but-prominent stability that was most noticeably missing from his previously unfulfilled life, in turn opening his eyes to the vitalities of needs right in front of him, rather than the uncertainties of the wants that constantly allude him. Hirons’ script asks plenty of compelling questions that attempt to evade genre tropes for as long as the film possibly can, however MacDonald’s intimately warm and affectionate direction insightfully guiding us on the elated feelings and rarity of life-altering love, is among the movie’s most redeemable qualities, particularly in the director’s undying appreciation for the city of Manchester, which feels like a character of its own within the movie, as a result of the permeating splendor of Rachel Clark’s winsome cinematography capturing a vibrantly infectious tapestry among the decorated setting. In a lot of ways, MacDonald’s direction definitely makes it easy to get caught up in the confines of exhilaratingly intense and prolific love of limitless entrancement, however it’s those quietly quaint moments of curious interaction between Owen and Emily that truly levitate the film to soaring heights of sensual sincerity, without anything even closely resembling physicality between the characters, with Alicia constantly finding believably grounded and instinctual ways for each of the characters to effectively evade the kind of internalized yearning for one another that they each refuse to confront until it’s absolutely necessary. On the aforementioned focus of Clark’s imagery, I appreciated the freshly innovative methods she used to conjure tangibly enclosing distance between the characters in her framing, with the film enacting a much more claustrophobic captivity the brighter that their connective emphasis flourished once the protective walls of initially enacted hesitation start to come down. Clark’s single greatest strength as a documentarian seems to be how she weaves in and out of characters and environments so effortlessly in the symmetry of her capture, without anything even closely resembling clumsily intrusive edits to detectably emphasize post-production influence, but even in the ways she articulates such energetic exuberance in the candidness of the adorning nightlife, there’s an unidentifiable atmospheric X-factor that permeates breathlessly in the familiarity of the audience immersing themselves once more in the particulars of such an unpredictable age of impenetrable resiliency, where much of the unavoidable awkwardness and spontaneous irresponsibility comes across so naturally beneficial in the actions of the characters, and while this isn’t exactly a film that feels preoccupied with a particular place in time, instead of navigating how far someone would go to hold onto that immortal feeling of limitless splendor, it does manage to push the experience further in its articulate attention to faithfully accurate detail, evoking a lived-in kind of connective appeal that ties itself so effectively to the particulars of our own life experiences. Combine this with the impeccable performances of Angourie Rice and Spike Fearn working overtime to bring these characters to life with charming personalities and refreshing earnestness, combining for a conductive kind of compassionately swoon-worthy chemistry that steals our hearts without the intention of ever giving it back. Rice brings a naturalistic likeability to Emily that makes her portrayal feel lived-in with the limitless kind of realism that extends beyond the movie’s fictional narrative, where even against the irresponsible actions of the character, Rice still conveys empathetic vulnerability in a subplot of her own, offering her ample opportunity to indulge in the emotional dexterity of the character, the likes of which Rice musters effectively with tender sensibilities steering a damaged heart of her own. As for the leading lad, although this is my first time experiencing Fearn at the forefront of a narrative outpouring, the British bloke makes up for in manic panic what he lacks in opportune experience, crafting an adaptive underlining to his auspicious approach that takes the script’s comedic material miles, on account of his authentically unprocessed responses balancing such shock and awe, particularly the elasticity of his expressive mannerisms conveying the situational magnitude of the socially enacted stakes from continuously opening himself up. While each do more than enough to carry the responsible load, there’s simply no comparison to what they accomplish simultaneously together, selling the audience seamlessly on not only their blossoming romance, with enough time and patience to meticulously develop, as well as the restlessly stirring drama elicited from so much campus culture toxicity, and though there’s plenty of assistance from a commanding supporting cast, as well as a scene-stealing appearance or two from Minnie Driver, it constantly comes back to the gripping grasp that Rice and Fearn have on these love-sick youths, producing such realistically candid portrayals that never cave when the lights of performative pressure shine the brightest on them. Lastly, being that this is a romantic comedy, there’s plenty of advantageous balance in each of those creative components towards the film’s execution to render results without repetition, leaving much of the expected tonal shifts free from the expansion of the interpretation. The generated romance certainly isn’t free from contrivances or cliches, as it does require some suspension of disbelief to transition from one development to the next, but as previously mentioned, there’s permeated feelings between Owen and Emily long before the movie opts to indulge upon them, and with additional levity in the form of some subtly manufactured comedic beats attaining enough reactive influence without entirely turning this into a sideshow, the film finds naturally plausible methods in deviating from one side to the next, helping to maintain freshness in the expanse of its 106-minute runtime, which could’ve easily felt tedious if one or both of these ingredients failed to effectively resonate.

NEGATIVES

While Finding Emily is a refreshing breath of air in a derivatively interchangeable subgenre, it fails to competently evade predictability on account of some scattered tropes and contrivances, the likes of which illuminate a glaringly telegraphed path as quickly realized as the film’s opening act. MacDonald seems very aware of this, as the overarching mystery pertaining to the disappearance of Owen’s dream girl is addressed in the most simultaneously clumsy and ridiculous manner possibly ever attempted, but even it merely slows down and doesn’t completely derail the inevitability of where this film is headed, and while it feels like a small speedbump in a much more immensely productive bigger picture, I do wish that so much more about it deviated exponentially on its creativity, even if that came at the cost of keeping these characters from their much deserved happiness. Beyond inescapable predictability, I can say at least personally that the usage of the movie’s remarkably extensive soundtrack, while seamlessly synthetic to the music montages drifting through Owen and Emily’s evolving friendship, does feel slightly too abrasively intrusive during scenes where the tracks correspond with such meaningful dialogue, where everything from the imbalanced sound mixing, to the tone of the instrumentals and dialogue, to even the amount of songs themselves, feels distracting to the integrity of the scene, leaving each interpretable moment feeling like a chore to cohesively distinguish dialogue that were already obscured by British accents so thickly resonating that they took time to consistently decipher. On this very same topic, while subjective to each respective member of the audience, I personally found a majority of the selections to feel obnoxiously overbearing, considering my music tastes are seemingly the exact opposite of what’s represented here, and while a soundtrack is such a small and insignificant aspect of a film’s finished product, I do think that MacDonald relied on it nearly as much as the performances to vividly convey atmosphere within an environment, with enough chosen selections to fill a double album.

OVERALL
Finding Emily is a warmly intimate and sweetly sincere kind of romantic comedy that certainly commits itself to a charmingly affectionate romance blossoming between the radiating chemistry of Angourie Rice and Spike Fearn, but beyond that dissects thematically into the Gen-Z scrutiny of a hate mob mentality that makes Owen’s reuniting search an even more impossible objective. While the film fails to effectively evade its glaringly evident predictability, on account of stacked contrivances that telegraph its intended destination, it’s still a visually stunning and creatively chaotic campus comedy that educates its audience by challenging the conventions of connection and obsession, all while serving as a lively and luscious love-letter to Manchester’s invigorating nightlife

My Grade: 8.2 or B+