\u201cLove is a state of temporary psychosis,\u201d claims Sigmund Freud, in the opening title card of Finding Emily<\/em>. Once upon a time, of course, this particular psychosis was less of a temporary presence on our cinema screens and more of a regular feature. But in the streaming era, romcoms are a rare breed; how pleasing, then, to see an unabashed romantic comedy back on the big screen, and a homegrown British one from _Four Weddings And A Funeral_production company Working Title, no less.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a sweet little film which makes no bones about following in the tradition of its Richard Curtis-ian forebears, even if it tries to inject a bit of Gen-Z self-awareness and subversion along the way. Our star-cross\u2019d story begins in a Manchester Student Union bar: one night, scruffy music technician Owen (Spike Fearn), with a Stone Roses haircut and a fidgety soft-lad Gallagher swagger, stumbles upon a cute girl named Emily (Sadie Soverall). They enjoy a slow-motion meet-cute, where the world around them seems to fade away, West Side Story<\/em>-style. They vibe. But then Emily disappears, and though she gives Owen her number, it\u2019s one digit short.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Alicia MacDonald\u2019s direction almost feels like a Mancunian take on Rye Lane<\/em>, colourful and vibrant with music everywhere…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n So, Owen sets out on a romantic\/obsessive (delete as appropriate) mission to track her down \u2014 which is how he bumps into the wrong Emily (Spider-Man<\/em>\u2019s Angourie Rice), an American psychology student and confirmed romance cynic who believes that love is an act of insanity. Struggling to find a suitable subject for her thesis, she realises that Owen\u2019s desperate mission to find the real Emily might be the perfect case-study of self-sabotage. Thus, a 10 Things I Hate About You<\/em>-style \u2018secret scheme\u2019 is hatched \u2014 a classic romcom conceit \u2014 in which Emily creates her very own deeply unethical \u201cStanford prison experiment\u201d, as she puts it, without Owen\u2019s awareness or consent. Or, as her Romcom Best Friend suggests, in the Gen-Z vernacular: \u201cIt\u2019s giving illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It all goes about the way you might expect it to go, with a romance they didn\u2019t realise was happening until it was right in front of them, a love that goes unrequited until it is, inevitably, requited. Plenty of stuff here stretches credulity, even for this genre \u2014 are podcasts really blared out on big screens and loudspeakers, live across university campuses, like it\u2019s Times Square in a film about the end of the world? \u2014 and there are some fairly broad caricatures of \u2018woke\u2019 politics, which slightly undermine a real point the film wants to make.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But the script, by Rachel Hirons, has some strength to it, self-aware enough to reference genre tropes like Manic Pixie Dream Girls, and robust enough to have a genuine narrative debate on earnestness versus cynicism. And it sails by with charm and warmth: Alicia MacDonald\u2019s direction almost feels like a Mancunian take on Rye Lane<\/em>, colourful and vibrant with music everywhere (shout-out to Nia Archives and Tom Tom Club on the soundtrack); while Rice and Fearn are bright and breezy company, both game for self-effacing comedy and with bags of chemistry between them. For a good romcom, that\u2019s half the battle.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n A warm, mostly funny Brit-romcom which both celebrates and tweaks the old template \u2014 with winsome turns from Rice and Fearn.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a meet-cute, Owen (Spike Fearn) is given the wrong number for his dream girl (Sadie Soverall). Psychology student Emily (Angourie Rice) helps him to track her down \u2014\u202fwhile also secretly aiding her university project. Soon, the pair grow unexpectedly closer. \u201cLove is a state of temporary psychosis,\u201d claims Sigmund Freud, in the opening title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10016,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014\/revisions\/10016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Finding](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/finding-emily.jpg\")
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