Cast: Adelaide Clemens, Leo Suter, Connie Nielsen, Karolina Porcari, Sam Gillett, Sebastian Croft, Stephen Dorff, Toby Sebastian
Critics Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Director: Martha Coolidge
Duration: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Release details: I’ll Find You had at first festival run at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020: Taormina Film Fest 2019, Camerimage 2019, NNW Festival 2019, Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival 2020, San Francisco Jewish film Festival 2020.
Story
A young couple – Robert, a catholic opera singer and Rachel, a Jewish violinist, dream of one day performing together at Carnegie Hall. When they’re torn apart by the German invasion of Poland, Robert vows to find Rachel, no matter what. His search takes him on a journey through the heart of Nazi Germany, to a reckoning – that Rachel may be lost to him forever.
Review
With recent Ukraine & Russia war, one cannot put the thought of countries being ravaged by war savagely and lives being destroyed. ‘I’ll Find You’ is one such story.
This period love story is about Robert, a catholic opera singer and Rachel, a Jewish violinist. Although, Rachel is engaged to be married with David, it doesn’t stop her from falling in love with her long-lost friend, who reunites with her as her boyfriend. Just when you think it’s a rosy love story, World War-II strikes and with Germans invading Poland, Robert and Rachel’s love story takes a nasty turn. How & when Robert finds her, what does he do next? That forms the rest of the story.
With a limited budget the set-up is awesome, and we’re transported into the era which is established with impressive detail. Performances are good. The lead pair’s chemistry is superb. Leo Suter is particularly sincere. Adelaide Clemens too does a fine job. But the film is somewhat slow and a bit of a drag. You can tell the twists, even though the story does its best to surprise you and it somewhat does, it’s still a lukewarm affair. The tension builds up when the war is interjected in the love story but it’s kept to a minimum, and hence you don’t feel the imminent dangers of a war. The film also jumps ahead in time, abruptly several times and that doesn’t help the pace.
It’s quite ambitious and the story has the potential, where the director sincerely his tell us about a love story in times of war. The film’s uneven pace and some predictable twists are a dampener. Still, it has what it takes to tug at your heartstrings with its compelling narrative that could have soared with just a little more emphasis on the pulls and pressures of one of the most defining moments of a historic war.
ReviewRon 