Dir. Nicholas Jasenovec, USA , 2009, 87 mins
Cast: Michael Cera, Charlyne Yi, Seth Rogen
Review by Christopher Upton
Be it in as an emotion or as a tangible object, love is one of the most difficult things in the world to pin down. Therefore it's difficult not to feel at least a little empathetic when Charlyne Yi says she doesn't believe in it. This part-real/part-faux documentary looks at her quest to discover the precise meaning of this tricky word, and covers her ‘unexpected' finding of it.
When Paper Heart tries to come across as a sincere documentary it performs exceptionally; Charlyne Yi's mumbling, childlike approach to interviewing may grate after a while but it gets inspired responses from the interviewees. On her trails across the U.S. we see all different love stories thanks to Elvis impersonators, lovey dovey divorce lawyers and a man worryingly attached to his Harley Davidson. Thanks to Yi's apparent naivety these people completely open up in a way that wouldn't happen if the interviews had been conducted in a more intrusive and journalistic style; her curiosity and likeability is incredibly infectious. Yi also manages to perform the difficult task of interviewing children and not ending up with a “ kids say the funniest things” style ensemble of cute answers. Strangely the children appear more informed on the subject that Yi herself.
Unfortunately, while this is enthralling, it is cut off, perhaps unfairly, so that a storyline involving Yi and Michael Cera can take precedence. Apparently spontaneously, Yi meets Cera at a party and, believably with their painfully reserved personalities, they hit it off. Michael Cera, playing himself for the first time since the internet hit of Clark and Michael, effectively manages to convey the frustration that would inevitably come from having your life subjected to deep scrutiny by a documentary film crew. The two leads' nervousness is pitch perfect but the story seems like a project that could have been taken on by both protagonists separately from this film.
The biggest problem with it arises from the fact that it's like two separate films sandwiched together. It isn't that any part of the film isn't well acted, and it certainly isn't poorly scripted; it just doesn't belong in the same film as the heart warming confessions of real people. Whether it's Yi's celebrity friends or a couple of teenage lovebirds from the Northwest, their honest confessions and admissions are undermined by a phony story that runs parallel.
While it's obvious that it's been designed to highlight how a relationship can grow, the stories and Yi's cardboard cut-out scenes, reminiscent of the work of Michel Gondry, convey this much more effectively and don't detract. The thing is, when you've asked people about such a far reaching subject as this and they have been so sincere, it devalues the whole production not to allow the documentary to come to its own conclusions but rather to mock one up for it.
Most reviews have labelled the film as twee and inferred that this was to its detriment, but the truth is love can be twee. Love can also be joyful, heartbreaking and tumultuous but it only really works, if it is honest. In a post modern gesture the on-screen director states they don't have an end to the movie. Unfortunately that is more truthful than whatever else Yi and Jasenovec have created here
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