Finding Emily shows how hardened beliefs make people see what they want to see, what they already consider to be true, and the havoc this wreaks.
Alicia MacDonald’s feature film debut follows Owen Brompton’s (Spike Fearn, The Batman) search for his elusive dream girl (Sadie Soverall, Saltburn) after receiving a wrong number, and his subsequent team-up with psychology student Emily Raine (Angourie Rice, Spider-Man: No Way Home) on the way. With a visa on the line, Emily is desperate to prove her hypothesis on the detriments of romantic attachment and finds in Owen the seemingly perfect case study.
Shot on location in Manchester, the movie feels grounded, with lived-in spaces. The production design is excellent; the homes are messy and likely for each respective character. Emily and Owen have a palpable connection as friends first and then as something more. While bickering couples have their place in romantic comedies, without solid rhyme or reason, it can be an obvious crutch for establishing chemistry that’s otherwise missing. Instead of this manufactured tension, the characters are developed deeply on their own accord, both in Rachel Hirons’ screenplay and in how the actors embody them. Spike Fearn plays Owen with a goofy, bumbling charisma, initially reminding me of a non-posh, nervous Hugh Grant type. Whereas Grant’s romantic roles are so obviously embarrassed and ashamed of their awkwardness, Owen fully embraces it. It’s a special kind of person who is so unapologetically themselves for better or for worse, and Fearn makes this performance seem easy.
The best romantic comedies ask us to look inward and challenge our propensities, particularly about interpersonal relationships. But looking inward, determining who we are and what we stand for, is moot without incorporating new experience and information. Finding Emily shows how hardened beliefs make people see what they want to see, what they already consider to be true, and the havoc this wreaks. It’s a charming movie that, at times, struggles with the paradox it poses — looking inward is nothing without assessing outward reality, but to look outward truthfully requires looking inward too.
Angourie Rice plays into these contradictions that Emily exemplifies extraordinarily. You can see a million different conflicting thoughts and feelings pass over her in mere seconds. While the film starts with Owen’s perspective, it’s Emily who goes through the biggest arc of change. Her visa is a real concern, but the thesis is also a desperate bid to confirm her own bias, as she craves the safety of corroborating what she already believes based on her own tendencies in romantic attachments. Emily falls into the same bad practice of analysis many are prone to: taking something true about herself and making it into broader theory. Her claims aren’t completely baseless, but her motivation for proving them is entirely self-interested. She seeks to be understood, not to understand, and is unwilling to pivot or prove herself wrong if need be.
Despite Emily’s sometimes cruel shortcomings, she’s sympathetic because her desire to be right ultimately stems from not wanting to be alone in her very human weaknesses. Further complicating matters, Emily also projects onto Owen because she wants him to be the ideal romantic lead she’s subconsciously cast him as in her head. Early on, she admits to Owen that his continued search is something she’d want someone to do for her. When she pushes Owen past what he’s comfortable with, it’s to collect evidence and because she wants him to be the type of guy who makes grand gestures at all costs. This contradiction — a simultaneous need to dethrone love and romance while also asking others to play into those roles — makes her fascinating and actualized, if not irritating at times. Emily consistently puts on an academic lens to maintain a distance that might preclude her from human folly. However, it’s this insistence that she’s somehow removed from her peers in this regard that makes her so susceptible to repeating those very patterns.
The drive to turn every personal experience into theories or social critique is perfectly encapsulated by the TikToks, articles, and podcast episodes throughout, each with a different agenda and point of view based on a wide variety of outside projections. When Owen decides to go on the podcast, it’s to defend himself against these projections, not to seek "Emily." He too, naturally, wants to be understood.
Romantic comedies resonate despite their formulaic nature when they aim to expose something pertinent to the human condition writ large, especially among young people. Everyone wants to feel like they belong, and when individual connections fail, analysis and critique provide safety in connecting to the collective whole. The film captures this sentiment well, but when you think too much about the details, like an ensemble of one-dimensional stock characters and their lack of resolution, the disparity between what the film wants to say about personhood and projection versus what’s shown becomes too apparent. Maybe the romantic comedy, like love, shouldn’t be looked at too closely. Or, if we do want to study it closely, we should accept that contradictions and inconsistencies are part of the game.
Finding Emily is now in theatres in the US and Canada.
Photo: Letterboxd
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