Finding Emily

The Rom-Com as a Rorschach Test

I’ve always had a soft spot for the rom-coms that don’t just make you laugh—they make you wince. The ones where the grand gesture isn’t just awkward, but wrong, where the pursuit of love edges into something messier, something that feels uncomfortably close to real life. Finding Emily, Alicia MacDonald’s debut feature, is that kind of film. It’s a movie that wants to be both a love letter to the genre and a gentle ribbing of it, and for the most part, it pulls it off. But like all good rom-coms, it’s also a mirror. And what you see in it might say more about you than the film itself. The premise is simple enough: Owen (Spike Fearn), a sound engineer with the kind of earnestness that borders on self-sabotage, meets a girl at a party. They share a moment—one of those fleeting, electric connections that feel like the start of something. Then she gives him the wrong number. Or maybe it’s the right number, but the wrong Emily. Either way, Owen is left with a handful of digits and a heart full of longing. What follows is a quest that’s equal parts charming and cringe, as he enlists the help of Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), a psychology student who sees his obsession as the perfect case study for her thesis on the "evolutionary hangover" of romantic love.

That’s the thing about Finding Emily—it’s not just a story about finding love. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves to justify the chase. Owen isn’t just looking for a girl; he’s looking for the girl, the one who got away before he even had her. And Emily, for all her academic detachment, isn’t just studying him. She’s studying herself, testing whether her own skepticism about love holds up against the chaos of Owen’s pursuit. Their dynamic is the film’s secret weapon. Fearn and Rice have a chemistry that feels lived-in, the kind that makes you believe these two have been circling each other long before the cameras started rolling. Fearn, in particular, is a revelation. Owen could so easily tip into caricature—a lovable loser, a man-child—but Fearn plays him with a vulnerability that keeps him grounded. There’s a moment early on, when Owen is explaining his grand plan to track down Emily, where his voice cracks just slightly. It’s the kind of detail that could’ve been played for laughs, but Fearn lets it sit. It’s uncomfortable. It’s real. MacDonald, who cut her teeth in television, brings a lightness of touch to the material that feels effortless. The film moves at a clip, but it’s never in a hurry. There’s a scene midway through where Owen and Emily sit in a diner, picking at fries while Owen recounts his latest dead-end lead. The camera lingers on their faces, the clatter of plates and murmured conversations filling the silence between them. It’s a small moment, but it’s the kind of scene that makes you lean in. You’re not just watching these characters; you’re with them. That’s a rare thing in a genre that often feels like it’s performing for an audience rather than inviting them in. Of course, not everything lands. The third act stumbles a bit, relying on a few too many rom-com tropes—the grand gesture, the public declaration, the last-minute dash to the airport (or in this case, the train station). It’s not that these moments don’t work; it’s that they feel expected, like the film is checking boxes rather than surprising us. And then there’s the supporting cast, which is so packed with quirky side characters that some of them barely register. The mass email incident, where Owen’s search goes viral and draws the ire of the student union, is a clever idea in theory, but in execution, it feels like a subplot that’s been shoehorned in to give the film a bit of edge. (It’s also the one moment where the film’s Gen Z trappings—TikTok, podcasts, social media outrage—feel more like set dressing than organic to the story.)