Finding Emily (2026)
How do you find love in a panopticon? It feels like every month there’s another example of some moment of romance that goes viral (or semi-viral), from 2021’s “couch guy” to West End Caleb to the coworkers caught having an affair at a Coldplay concert. Rightly or wrongly, these people get endlessly scrutinized and criticized by the Internet at large – and it’s hard to remember that a random, out of context moment is rarely the full story. Meeting and falling in love with someone requires vulnerability, an embrace of your most embarrassing qualities, a defying of logic. How do you do that when the whole Internet is watching?
The 2026 British romantic comedy Finding Emily tries to answer this question. It’s a juicy, topical subject to tackle in this genre. Our lead Owen (Spike Fearn) becomes accidentally Internet famous on his quest to find Emily – the girl he met at a college bar – while another Emily (Angourie Rice) uses Owen as a test case to prove her thesis that romantic attachment leads to self sabotage. There are numerous realistically rendered montages of TikToks weighing in on Owen’s antics – what Owen really represents in society, how what he’s doing is actually creepy, how it’s actually harmless, why it’s just So Much Deeper Than That – capturing that frustrating quality of the Internet where everyone is both right and wrong at the same time.
And how do you actually find a genuine connection in an environment where everything is up for debate, where everything you do can be turned into discourse fodder? Despite everything, Owen and Emily do. They are the shining, sparkling center of this film. It’s just fun to watch the two of them. Owen has this nice, fluid physicality to him. Not overly polished or confident, but genuinely at ease with himself. And Emily, despite her potentially killjoy insistence that there’s no evolutionary point in love, is still warm and curious and goofy. The movie works because they work together. A lot of quibbles can be easily overcome if you’re ultimately rooting for the couple at the center of the story.
Speaking of quibbles…I have one big one. That comes in the form of a minor antagonist I will call Feminist Emily to distinguish her from all the other Emilys in the narrative. Feminist Emily’s grievances are legitimate, unlike the ones from the Internet Discourse Machine. She’s concerned about student safety and privacy that is clearly violated when Owen emails all students named Emily at her university. She’s not painted as totally out of her mind, but definitely framed as being a hindrance for our main couple. And like…why include this character??? She doesn’t pose enough of a consistent threat to be a proper villain, which makes her addition feel even more out of place and, frankly, a random potshot at supposedly overly sensitive feminists. Well, I’m going to be an overly sensitive feminist about this and say it’s unnecessary and detracts from an otherwise extremely delightful film.
Because Finding Emily is fun, and I hate to have to smooth over these speed bumps to be entertained by a heartfelt story about people finding love In This Modern World. Even though romantic comedies are certainly not known to be particularly kind to women, I resent having to sit through an unexpected swerve into painting feminists out to be silly from a film that feels like it should know better. It’s pretty clear eyed and sharp spoken about almost everything else. If you take a two hour break from being a feminist you can enjoy it without reservations.
Each month I highlight an organization that’s important to me. I encourage people to check out the cool work they do, and also to find causes within their community to support as well.
This month I'm highlighting Books Through Bars.
