Release Date: Aug. 14
Director: Nick Jasenovec
Writers: Jasenovec, Charlyne Yi
Cinematographer: Jay Hunter
Starring: Yi, Michael Cera, Jake Johnson
Studio/Run Time: Overture Films, 88 mins.
Awkward love blossoms for Cera and Yi in experimental documentary
In Paper Heart, comedienne Charlyne Yi takes it upon herself to investigate her own romantic anomie in a series of forcibly adorable interview segments with married couples, Tarot readers and Michael Cera. Calling the experience a documentary isn’t entirely accurate, as a scripted courtship with Cera (playing himself in repressed man-child excess) makes this as much a handheld art romp as an objective exercise in puppy love.
But sequences including a sobering interview with a gay New York couple inject much-needed substance into an overdose of post-Juno ironic detachment.
Sweet, rambling and flimsy, this pleasant examination on the frailty of human attraction might not reverse divorce statistics, but it does make for a delightful date-night alternative.