Sigmund Freud once said, “Love is a state of temporary psychosis.” Or so goes the opening quote of the new British romantic comedy “Finding Emily,” which centers on a sweet and hapless 23-year-old sound engineer Owen (Spike Fearn) who enlists the help of a third-year psychology student named Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), an American, to track down a mysterious girl, also named Emily, that he met at a party and who also attended the fictional Manchester City University.
The opening quote is the crux of Emily Raine’s thesis on attachment theory. She believes romantic love is an evolutionary vestige no longer needed by modern man. This, of course, stems from abandonment issues relating to her deadbeat dad and a situationship she’s been stuck in for three years with a fellow student named Tristan (Timothy Innes). Emily initially sees Owen as a case study. She can help him on his quest to find his manic pixie dream Emily (who was, in fact, dressed as a fairy when they met) and use his psychosis to prove her thesis, and hopefully win a fellowship that will grant her a work visa to stay in the U.K.
This being a romantic comedy, we know from the jump that whether or not Owen finds his Emily is not the point. Through spending time together, Owen will learn that love at first sight, the kind that makes time stand still, is not real. That real love is rooted in friendship. Emily Raine will learn that maybe love is madness, but that’s okay. Screenwriter Rachel Hirons certainly knows the beats her story must hit. The mechanics of the genre lay out where this story is going to end, so its charm lies in the journey it takes to get there. Here’s where the film falters.
Fearn is absolutely charming as a working-class Manchester lad (Boy, is it refreshing to hear a regional British accent, and not just another posh boy). He’s moody and romantic, but also practical, sweet and effortlessly funny. The film shines when he is given the spotlight. Which is unfortunately not often enough, as the film gives far more solo screen time to Emily Raine. While Rice is plucky in a very American way, she lacks the sort of spark with Fearn that a rom-com of this manner needs for the audience to root for them to be together.
The picture also dims when the two don’t share the screen. Her Emily is incredibly manipulative throughout the film, hiding her true motives from Owen for most of their time together. Which, again, is a common trope of genre, like James Marsden in “27 Dresses,” Heath Ledger in “10 Things I Hate About You,” or both Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Ethics aside, all is forgiven by the end because the chemistry between the leads is there. Despite Fearn’s charm, Rice just doesn’t have the juice to create believable heat between them.
It also doesn’t help that every single supporting character is more interesting than Rice’s Emily. Cora Kirk as her roommate Anna steals every scene she’s in, and not by showboating. Just through her sheer charisma and star power. The same goes for Anthony J. Abraham as her quick-witted boyfriend Kyle. I even longed for more time with Rhea (a hilarious and underused Amber Grappy), the queer bartender at the Student Union who observes Owen and Emily from afar throughout the film. She delivers some of the film’s wittiest dialogue and nails it each time. She also makes her character feel fully realized, not just a trope-y sidekick, which makes her sidelining all the more disappointing.
Other supporting characters had me scratching my head. Like the aforementioned Tristan, who in the past would have simply been a charming bad man à la Hugh Grant in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Yet here he’s given a redemptive scene that unintentionally (or maybe intentionally??) puts most of the blame for the pain their situationship caused on Emily. There’s also a new generation of mean girls, this time in the form of an “overly woke” feminist student body president also named Emily (Kat Ronney) and a news podcaster (Nadia Parkes). These characters take on the mean girl antagonistic tropes solely through their ambition and earnestness. It’s a strange twist on these stock characters that aims for satire but ultimately lands in a liminal space, one barely adjacent to internalized misogyny.
For her part, director Alicia MacDonald does a wonderful job of showcasing Manchester as its own character full of gorgeous architecture and musical history. The outside world she places Owen and Emily in is a delight, but again, she can’t guide them toward anything remotely resembling chemistry.
Part of this is due to the world’s deeply non-sexual take on romantic love. Despite its college setting, the only characters in the whole film who ever come close to having sex are Owen’s older brother Matt (Jack Riddiford) and his wife Freya (Isabella Laughland), who we’re told in a post-credits sequence are now expecting a baby.
The film is from Working Title, and all the marketing says: From the producers of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Love Actually“—two films that had loads of sex either explicitly shown or heavily implied as part of their romance plots. Now, those are R-rated flicks, and “Finding Emily” is rooted firmly in PG-13 territory, but there are at least a dozen PG-13 teen and college-set rom-coms from the 1990s that had more sex on their minds than this film about twenty-somethings does. It’s an echo of a better film, with just enough substance left to be familiar, but not enough to stand on its own two feet.
