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The Debilitating Defensiveness of Finding Emily

The romantic-comedy genre is not what it used to be, for good or bad. Its tropes are extremely understood by now, and it is a genre that seems to turn more people off than any other. I know folks who will watch any kind of movie except a rom-com. And that may be a part of the reason the genre has fallen out of fashion in recent decades. When we do see them, they have to be wrapped in either undeniable movie stars like Anyone But You or conceptual gimmicks like One Night Only or Palm Springs or just be attached to other priorities alongside the romance like Voicemails for Isabelle or The Idea of You. And it also helps if they can work in a number of flashy antics.
The filmmakers behind Finding Emily, director Alicia MacDonald and writer Rachel Hirons, by contrast seem to really believe in the sincere rom-com that doesn’t need any of that stuff, and are also perhaps annoyed by what they perceive as a more cynical culture that has wounded it. Specifically it is a movie that points the finger squarely at Gen-Z and their standards, while also trying to convince them directly that the kind of romance expressed in rom-coms is still meaningful and valid. It is a curious mix of attitudes that it can’t quite pull off. It’s hard to make fun of “the woke” while earnestly convincing them that what you claim they dismiss is also “woke” too.
Naturally, the movie is set against a backdrop of academia. The University of Manchester in fact, a refreshing departure for a British rom-com which typically cares only about London or the countryside. Owen Brompton (Spike Fearn, looking like a lost Gallagher brother), who is not a student himself, works as a sound engineer at the student union bar where during a costume party he meets and forms a pretty instant connection with a girl in a fairy costume (Sadie Soverall). She winds up having to leave with a friend all of a sudden though and hastily gives Owen her number and shouts back her name: Emily. However Owen finds that the number is wrong, and taking it as an innocent mistake endeavours to find this Emily on campus. In this, he crosses paths with a different Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), a psychology student who sees in him a case study for her thesis on the evolutionary defects of love, which she earnestly believes in since the withering of her own last relationship. Eventually, via a student list that Emily illicitly procures for him, Owen accidentally sends a message for his anonymous Emily to every student of that name on campus, sparking both an uproar over his apparently sexist entitled behaviour and a viral interest in the mystery of this Emily.
It goes without saying that Emily Raine’s paper is ridiculous, both as a theory and a plot device. In what we get out of the contents of this ideology, her arguments are very facile and hollow (and neither she nor the movie seems aware that aromantic people exist), and as an archetypal rom-com character trait it is hilariously blunt -forecasting the entirety of her arc from being a disbeliever in love to falling for Owen by the end. The background of this failed relationship that on some level is still puttering along in a very “casual” sense does little to invest life or much resonating rationale otherwise. Indeed, it only makes Emily look more shallow. Playing the character as American for only the barest of plot reasons, Rice can make some of this sympathetic, but it is largely a weight on the character that feels forced in order to tie into the commentary MacDonald and Hirons are trying to make.
There are a lot of assumptions adults who haven’t been to university in a while have of modern university students and modern university culture -these filmmakers included. Myself included. And while I suspect some of the themes related to that touched on by this film are modestly accurate, the actual tenor feels off. Perhaps those involved in student governments do fixate a lot on perceived issues of misogyny and patriarchal double-standards to the exasperation of their Dean -here, pointedly a second-wave feminist played by Minnie Driver; but it is doubtful they do so with the buzzword-y language and tone applied here. This irritable caricature recurs through the film, her perspective mocked by the script along the same lines as Emily's anti-love thesis, producing an image of young women (specifically at university) wrapping their identities in aimless anger and rejection of norms under the auspices of feminist activism or progressive ideology. And it is unmistakably in bad faith, particularly where it concerns a bizarrely widespread campus podcast that takes up the Emily story as its signature focus -eventually interviewing Owen and trapping him through a series of bad faith questions about his intentions. This sequence really crystallizes the idea governing the film: we know that Owen is a romantic with no ulterior motives, but in a modern, post-#MeToo context that is by this movie's argument a ludicrous proposition for most young women to accept. It comes very close to upholding the "man-hater" trope of young feminists as it subtly scolds these analogues for daring to question the motives of an unassuming nice guy like Owen.
They and a misguided Emily are the cause of all the grief Owen has to endure and it is incredibly tiresome. Possibly more-so is how it connects to an inflated attitude towards the film's romance -namely that a classical romantic evolution between two heterosexual young people has the veneer of something wild and taboo. And yet in spite of that the romance is actually engaging and effective. A big part of this comes down to the performances, especially from Fearn, who carries the movie and injects it with a vital earnest if naive sweetness -he has to be in order to make the intended commentary land. And he and Rice have a cute in chemistry, the relationship gradually evolving the further into the mess they both wind up and Owen’s fantasy about one Emily starts to fade by his growing affections for another. The movie lets them lean into the cuteness without quite going overboard. It very much has that puppy love vibe of a lot of teen romances, despite the age of both characters and their past romantic histories. Somehow, they make it work -and even through some of the very cliché plot developments such as the liar revealed and the grand closing gesture.
Finding Emily is a movie that wears proudly its grand gestures, subtly suggesting there is still a place for them in romance -though the effect of Owen’s early gestures is undercut in one of the movie’s stronger beats that resolves his initial quest for Emily in a responsible, authentic way that stands in contrast to much of the rest of the tone. But while this is admirable and parts of the movie dominated by Owen -including a financial situation around the house he, his brother and his girlfriend live in- are charming and entertaining, the movie’s prevailing attitude makes it tough to digest, and while it may be on the mark in some of its depictions of Gen Z culture and aesthetics it is way out of touch on others. The script in general just feels rather forced at times too, between Emily’s project and perspective, and the actions and dialogue of various side characters like the exasperated professor (Prasanna Puwanarajah) and Emily’s roommate Anna (Cora Kirk). If she is trying to sell the rom-com format to a new generation, MacDonald has a very strange way of going about it -this film does not thread the needle, its connections to youth culture are shallow and by its own messaging uncomfortable. It has some requisite charms and Fearn may be going places, but it is snarky in the wrong direction and is certainly not doing anything radical enough to warrant its pride.

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