Review of Paper Heart (2009) by Paul V — 21 Aug 2010

Paper Heart is a quasi-doc/romcom that follows comedian Charlyne Yi as she travels across America (and a few other places) to learn about love. Shortly into filming, she comes across Michael Cera (as himself), and they begin dating. Their relationship is depicted throughout the film in between interviews with (supposedly) real-life couples, scientists, and an amusing group of kids on a playground in Atlanta, who give Charlyne their own advice about how love is supposed to work.

Where Paper Heart works is in its series of interviews. Many of them are touching, and all of them feel real. The aforementioned little Georgian kids were surprisingly insightful for the most part, suggesting that Charlyne can't really take anyone else's advice; that she must figure out love on her own terms.

It falls flat in a few ways. For one, there is very little chemistry between Charlyne and Michael. On their own, they're both endearingly weird oddball comedians, but together, they seem far lass authentic. That brings us to the main problem with the film: the whole time, you're questioning what's real, and what's not. How much of the relationship between Michael and Charlyne is acted? Which leads to the question, how many of these 'interviews' are real, and how many are staged, and to what degree? By the end of the film, you feel unsure about what you think actually happened. Plus, we don't really know what Charlyne 'got' about love in the end.

But maybe that's the point; the film ends with a silly low-budget segment done with paper models showing Charlyne and Michael in a high-speed chase in Toronto, concluding with Michael saying, "Yeah, that's totally what happened," leaving it open to interpretation whether or not their relationship worked out. Love isn't a science, and though Paper Heart was a somewhat unfocused affair, its quirky, borderline-naive honesty (even if a lot of it may have been staged) makes it a worthwhile examination of love.