“Paper Heart” seeks both to secure romantic love and to define it, though it fails on both counts. While it presents some true throat-gulping interviews of couples truly in love, it breaks a cardinal rule of romance—you have to be honest about love.
The quirky Charlyne Yi, who has done comedy on film and stage, has teamed up with director Nick Jasenovec, and actor Jake Johnson (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) to make a mockumentary on love. She sets off on a road trip with her crew from Albuquerque to Atlanta, crisscrossing the country to find what love is. If it really exists, maybe it can exist for her.
The fictional portion of the film follows the budding romance between Charlyne and Michael Cera (“Knocked Up”), who plays himself. No movie comes without a complication. That is Charlyne's skepticism on finding the answers to love on her journey and also her ambivalence towards Michael.
The interview process reveals love in such variety that it redeems the choice to shoot a portion in the documentary style. From a scientist expounding the chemical reaction of love, children, and bikers—it seems Charlyne struggles to define what love is. And she gets some examples to reinforce her doubts, such as the guy at the Vegas wedding chapel who flipped a coin to see whether to get married or not.
For those who might have swallowed Charlyne's poison pill of negativism by now, don't get mired down. Some affirmations of romance will lift your boat. The use of puppets instead of dramatizations lend the most touching moments. The effect elevates the love stories into a magical place.
What’s not magical is yet a magician's trick the filmmakers attempt to pull off. This is why the film merits the distinction of "mockumentary," a documentary with some fiction. Charlyne's courtship with Michael Cera is endearing. The one problem is its all sham. They are acting the pangs of love. The viewers would not know this from the movie, and many will leave the theaters thinking this relationship is as genuine as the interviewee who says love means making a sacrifice.
Jasenovec came up with the idea of a narrative side to get Charlyne over her camera shyness. She was confident when acting her emotions. They felt the audience too would have an easier time with it. Yi stated in the press notes that, "People would think it's more real, more something to believe in if people weren't sure if this were a true documentary or not."
Sasha Baron Cohen fools his interviewees and some of his audience in “Borat” and “Bruno,” but they deserved it. Cohen wants people to wake up to the satire of themselves so that they might change their behaviors. “Paper Heart” only deceives for the sake of style.
It is forgivable that Nick is only Jake Johnson playing Nick and that the team left some of the sad interviews on the cutting room floor. As Charlyne says, "Sometimes you can only feel something if you take a risk." Here the risk should have been providing a true romance or sticking to the documentary form. That would be an honest relationship with the audience.
Stuart Kurtz is a free-lance arts, travel, issues writer with a blog at www.stuartkurtz.blogspot.com and can be contacted at decophile@hotmail.com.
