Finding Emily, 2026.
Directed by Alicia MacDonald.
Starring Spike Fearn, Angourie Rice, Cora Kirk, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Sadie Soverall, Nadia Parkes, Jack Riddiford, Isabella Laughland, Minnie Driver, Kat Ronney, Timothy Innes, Yali Topol Margalith, Phil Wang.
SYNOPSIS:
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.
Throughout the history of romantic comedies, the premise typically centers on a meet-cute involving questionable behavior by one party (usually a man in heteronormative relationships), which is either papered over or downplayed at the expense of his good looks or charming personality. From director Alicia MacDonald and screenwriter Rachel Hirons, Finding Emily is all about interrogating such debatable behavior, keeping its finger on the pulse of every perspective in the social climate.
By taking all of those perspectives into consideration while occasionally poking fun at the extremes of those stances, this is also an amusing film that shines with sharp observations. It’s also about how those thoughts can shift for some upon learning something as shallow as the guy they thought was a creep is attractive. Even more surprising, the film has an axe to grind against overcautious screeching regarding accusing someone of being unsafe while knowing next to nothing about them.
Spike Fearn’s Owen is a genuinely harmless, hopeless romantic, convinced that an awkward club encounter with fairy-costumed Emily (Sadie Soverall), a manic-pixie-dream-girl-like beauty who instantly fascinates him, is the one. Unfortunately, she is legitimately in a rush, but not without putting her digits into his phone before leaving. There’s only one problem, as Owen comes to find out when calling the next morning to prove to his brother Matt (Jack Riddiford) and his partner Freya (Isabella Laughland) that the connection is real: it’s missing a number. To immediately address the elephant in the room (and admittedly something I also thought of), yes, Owen could try figuring out the missing digit, but there is no guarantee that it was necessarily the last number that was forgotten; we don’t know the placement of the digit, which creates several more combinations. Is it the most ironclad, convincing setup? Not necessarily, but it works well enough to buy into.
Nevertheless, a quest begins across a Manchester campus where he works as a sound engineer to locate this Emily, asking around publicly and generally making a foolish, weirdo of his well-intentioned self. Naturally, it is brought to his attention that she may have intentionally forgotten a number, suggesting that Owen misinterpreted the vibe and the conversation, which is plausible but also highly unlikely given what we see. However, that also doesn’t stop our brains from repeatedly rewiring our perception of what we saw in those opening moments; there is no denying there was some goofy awkwardness, but maybe there was also no chemistry.
Among the various Emilys, he comes into contact with Angourie Rice’s Emily Raine, a psychology grad student preparing for a thesis on romance as an outdated notion that has long outlived its necessity, and that all love is good for is guaranteed self-implosion. Ethics be damned, she understandably perceives Owen as the perfect guinea pig to prove her point, befriending him, even going as far as assisting him in his unorthodox quest to reconnect with a girl he barely knows, and isn’t certain she actually wants to see him again. He has a dream, optimism, and a heart in the right place, though.
Once it becomes clear that Emily was once a romantic herself and has bottled up bitter thoughts about a relationship that never took on the seriousness she thought it would, her motive takes on another layer. The journey is filled with more than enough clever probing of both leads’ behavior, painting them as flawed yet endearing. Owen is a neurotic romantic and aspiring musician (Spike Fearn went to great lengths to make that part of the character believable, making his occasional singing and guitar-playing moments fully convincing), whereas Emily is conflicted and jaded but organically develops a kinship with her test subject.
Meanwhile, another part of Emily is almost happy to watch Owen potentially self-destruct, at one point essentially giving him the rope to hang himself, by passing along the email address of every Emily in the school, to which he sends out a blast CC’ing them into the same chain, becoming an anonymous weirdo in the eyes of everyone (a stylishly staged sequence with Owen walking around his home, as hallucinations of every Emily appear with something to say). He then doubles down and appears on a school podcast in hopes of clearing the negative perception clouding his pursuit of love. Again, every step of the way, the school is sent into a frenzy by a humorous bite in the script’s points and by their ever-changing stances based on new information or looks. And she knows that this experiment is her best bet at succeeding as a transfer student and earning a work visa.
The one misstep here is that there are also far too many supporting characters, usually in relationships, who are meant to either support or bring our leads back down to earth, except that they, or their own dilemmas, rarely make an impression. Thankfully, there is irresistible likability between Spike Fearn and Angourie Rice, set against an absorbing premise from the get-go, paving the way for plenty of laughs and emotion, with an emphasis on music that also gives Alicia MacDonald’s film a John Carney flavor.
Finding Emily might also sound like a darker romantic comedy from this review, yet it is anything but that; it’s always spirited, insightful, breezy, sweet, and funny, with infectious tunes and an air of uncertainty about how it will play out (although there are hunches and limited scenarios). It delivers on the romance and comedy, also featuring sharp social commentary that is made further compelling by its meta flourishes, in conversation with the genre’s formula and clichés.
SEE ALSO: Time is Precious and Life is Short: Director Alicia MacDonald on Finding Emily – Exclusive Interview
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
