Cast: Christian Camargo, Alexie Gilmore, Traci Dinwiddie, Craig Sheffer
Director: Erica Dunton
Screenplay: Erica Dunton
Cinematography: Alan Newcomb
Music: Múm
As a film critic, I frequently receive requests to watch undistributed films. Most of these, while exhibiting a passion for filmmaking, aren't very good. Find Love is an exception, and it's my hope that the movie's exposure as a selection of the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival will provide it with an opportunity to reach a wider audience. For newcomer writer/director Erica Dunton (this is her second feature, but the first to reach an audience), this represents a triumph of the spirit that underlies independent features.
Find Love is a love story, but of an atypical nature. It does not follow traditional motion picture trajectories. It's a simple dissection of one of humankind's most sublime emotional experiences. Nothing else in life is like falling in love - an exhilaration that blinds reason and shortcircuits logic. Love can be a narcotic, impelling us to act in ways that would otherwise be unthinkable. In Find Love, Dunton explores this with two characters, using both narrative and visual style to express this theme.
It starts in an airport, where two people meet while waiting for their delayed flight to Wilmington, North Carolina to board. Most of the time, such casual contact will lead to nothing. On rare occasions, however, the result can be an attraction that causes sparks to fly long before the plane does. Fate has determined that this man (Christian Camargo) and this woman (Alexie Gilmore) will spend the next hours of their life falling in love, but the limit of their happiness will be one day. The man has a life and a pregnant girlfriend he must return to, and the woman has a stale marriage awaiting her back in New York City. But for 24 hours, they are determined to gather rosebuds as they may.
In part due to the DV camera employed by cinematographer Alan Newcomb, Find Love often has a dreamy feel. When one considers how ethereal memories of the first blush of love are, this is the right style. It also makes us wonder whether everything we're seeing is real, or whether some of the events are the fantasies of the protagonists (some jumping around in time adds to the effect). The color scheme includes heavy doses of red (for passion), and there are images of hearts in nearly every shot - decorations, balloons, jewelry, decals, and signs. Love is indeed in the air, and the signs are everywhere.
There's an underlying sense of melancholy in the way these characters interact. They know their time is limited, and it presents them with a sense of urgency. The fantasy is that they will give up their lives and run away together, but the movie is smart enough to realize that reality doesn't offer such easy solutions. Like Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Before Sunset couplet, Find Love allows the characters to capture something precious in a limited time span, then give it up. By the end of the film, the protagonists don't even know each other's names (nor do we). But what they have experienced will linger for a lifetime.
For the most part, the dialogue has been improvised. Taking a cue from Mike Leigh, Dunton sketched out what each conversation should be about, then let the actors take over with the details. None of these impromptu interactions has a staged or awkward feel. We are convinced that these characters are speaking with one another. Credit actors Christian Camargo and Alexie Gilmore not only for making these conversations believable, but for bringing their alter-egos to life, and giving us two people worth caring about. Camargo and Gilmore's performances are unaffected and immensely appealing.
Find Love is a diamond in the rough - a touching and insightful film that tells of love and passion without the Hollywood hyperbole and gloss. It's a movie that works on two levels: on its own terms and in the way it ignites our memories of loves past and present. Too few movies dig this deeply into the viewer's psyche, and when one does, it deserves to be singled out.
© 2006 James Berardinelli