Shadows on the Wall | Finding Emily

Finding Emily

dir Alicia MacDonald
scr Rachel Hirons
prd Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Olivier Kaempfer
with Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Jack Riddiford, Cora Kirk, Minnie Driver, Anthony J Abraham, Nadia Parkes, Kat Ronney, Timothy Innes, Clara Lioe, Phil Wang, Ruby Ablett
release UK 22.May.26,
US 28.Aug.26
26/UK Universal 1h51

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There's enough charm in this romantic comedy to keep us engaged even if the plot treads such a well-worn path. Thankfully, the setting and characters are offbeat enough to add plenty of spark, and there's also a nice kick of music running all the way through. Director Alicia MacDonald and writer Rachel Hirons keep things bright and funny, and a lively young cast adds lots of energy.

In Manchester, Owen (Fearn) works as a university sound tech, having given up on both studies and a musical career. When he meets the fairy-like Emily at the Student Union, he's completely smitten. But she gave him an incomplete phone number, so he starts searching for Emilys. The first Emily (Rice) sees him as the perfect subject for her thesis on the warped psychology of love, so she offers to help. Then he goes viral on social media, with people calling him either an open-hearted romantic or an unhinged predator. Will Emily prove her theory?

Silly question. Everything about this narrative is obvious from the start, and each momentous event arrives right on cue, from the ritual humiliations to the awkwardly adorable attraction to several grand gestures. It helps that Fearn and Rice manage to keep Owen and Emily likeable even though they continually do idiotic things. And the dialog is packed with genuinely hilarious zingers, both from the leads and the gifted supporting ensemble of friends, family and teachers.

Despite mumbling much of his dialog, Fearn has a kinetic charm as the talented but disadvantaged Owen, while Rice undercuts the American-abroad Emily's aggression with the fact that she hasn't yet clocked what's really going on here. One highlight is the relationship between Owen and his big brother Matt (Riddiford), which bristles with raucous rivalry but finds some resonance in manly silences. And Emily has a similarly tetchy but close friendship with her straight-talking flatmate Anna (Kirk).

Emily's hypothesis is that romantic attraction is a vestige of evolution that is actually self-sabotaging in today's world. But of course we know that she is only saying that because she's had a rough experience with love herself. That this is her thesis topic isn't the most absurd thing about the movie, but the way she so brazenly manipulates her subject might be. As the lessons pile up in the final act, we never doubt where these people will find themselves. But the formula is so robust that it still keeps us smiling

themes, language 16.Apr.26

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