After a mind-numbing movie (Cold Souls, incidentally) I was ready for the lighthearted pseudo-documentary Paper Heart to help me remember why documentary film is so important. Paper Heart follows Charlyne Yi, a stand up comedian and musician who doesn’t believe that she can fall in love. She travels across the country interviewing people about their thoughts on love while she forms her own opinion. In the process of the documentary she herself experiences a surprising twist in her love life when boy heartthrob Michael Cera shows a romantic interest. This particular movie experience was unique in that I was one hundred percent enthralled by the movie.  I absolutely loved it, until the question and answer period. I felt like a little girl at a magic show who is suddenly shocked by the curtain being removed and the trick being proved as a fraud. But the movie, independent of the director’s comments, was one of the best I’ve seen while at Sundance.

Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera

 

When I believed Paper Heart was purely a documentary, there were so many wonderful, unique, believable aspects of the film. The whole audience was engaged; I have never heard such raucous laugher throughout the whole thousand-plus crowd, you really fell in love with this awkward, quirky tomboy in her quest for answers. There was a very natural, behind the scenes feeling to Paper Heart, often throughout the film it would show the sound and camera equipment. In the romantic scenes with Michael Cera it would sometimes pan over to the director and crew sitting near by which made the film all the more relatable and interesting.

One unique feature of the film was the cast of everyday characters who were interviewed on their experiences with love. Charlyne interviewed every type of loved one, there was devorce´ who was debating which of two women in his life was his soul mate. There were the high school sweethearts, the couple married fifty years, the high school seniors who just got hitched, bicker couples, children on the playground, Vegas wedding chapel workers, and a gay couple who had been together ten years. Each added to such a rich picture of what romance and true love is in our culture. The touching, and often quite hilarious interviews were illustrated by Charlyne’s makeshift marionettes, which added another dimension of creativity.

In between the love interviews we watch the tender intimate development of Michael Cera’s conquest of Charlyne and her gradual acceptance of his affection. As the film progresses we see how the new couple wishes to have privacy but he director urges the footage to continue for the sake of the documentary. Charlyne and Michael’s relationship suffers and ends while the cameras fallow the whole thing, and Charlyne’s prognosis that she can’t fall in love seems to be confirmed. Since it seems that the cameras were the kiss of death for this funny pair the ending is quite touching. The whole crew drives to Michael’s house in Toronto and let Charlyne enter his house without their presence. Aw, maybe they have a chance now!

Nope. First shock of the q and a section was that the director of the movie was not the man who I had grown to love as the director in the film. An actor played the director and dedicated companion of Charlyne throughout the movie…wait, so it wasn’t real then? It was revealed that the whole romance between Michael and Charlyne was scripted and purely for a plot line in the movie, in fact the touching last scene in Toronto was actually filmed first! Ah, hell naw! All the time I thought I was getting to see Michael Cera as a real twenty-year-old guy, and Charlyne as a real person convinced she is incapable of finding love. But then I’m told that the romance was fictional just like any other movie, so is Charlyne in reality facing the same thoughts as the one in the movie? Suddenly the mesmerizing, amazingly recorded documentary just turns into a regular film posing as reality and my euphoric bubble has burst. Pop. If I had left the film right after the credits I would have said it was perhaps the best movie at Sundance, but now I couldn’t help but feel a little deceived. Even if it was a trick, or just my misunderstanding going into the film, the characters and subject matter made Paper Heart a movie that stands out from the crowd.

Tags: charlyne yi, Cold Souls, lila lupetin, michael cera, paper heart, sundance

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.