Global Courant
Boldness defines Numa Perrier’s soapy romantic comedy The Perfect Find. Characters make unbelievable decisions in the name of love. Grand proclamations are yelled from across parks and outside apartment buildings. Everyone’s dressed in the most maximalist attire: Loud prints, geometrically striking jewelry, intense hairstyles. It all seems rather unbelievable until you remember the ridiculousness is part of the fun.
Like any good romantic comedy, The Perfect Find constructs a world into which you can escape. Jenna (Gabrielle Union) is a 40-something (the ambiguity of her age is significant to the plot) fashion editor who has spent the last year recovering from a devastating public breakup. Her 10-year relationship with Brian (DB Woodside), an equally ambitious careerist, crashed profoundly after Jenna sought clarity about their future. To escape the tabloid frenzy, Jenna moves back in with her parents.
The Perfect Find
The Bottom Line
Delicious work from Union and Torres sustains it.
Release date: Friday, June 23
Venue: Tribeca Film Festival (Spotlight Narrative)
Cast: Gabrielle Union, Keith Powers, Aisha Hinds, DB Woodside, Janet Hubert, Alani “La La” Anthony, Gina Torres
Director: Numa Perrier
Screenwriters: Leigh Davenport, based on the novel by Tia Williams
1 hour 39 minutes
Perrier economically reviews this backstory in the film’s opening credits, a collage of newspaper photos and headlines soundtracked by Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong’s “You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart.”
The family living arrangement does not last long. Jenna’s parents kick her out, forcing her to move back to Brooklyn. Her re-entry into city life dominates the first part of The Perfect Find, which immediately stakes its position among the chic messiness of Sex and the City, Run the World and Harlem.
Like Carrie, Ella and Camille, Jenna is out to make a name for herself and find love in New York. The New York City of Perrier’s feature, like those shows, is easily recognizable in the brownstone-lined blocks and street signs. The interiors are a different story, and it’s best not to consider too deeply how any of these characters make rent.
Jenna’s return to the city leads her to the offices of Darzine, a fictional publishing powerhouse run by its Anna Wintour-esque editor and Jenna’s enemy, Darcy (Gina Torres). The Perfect Find is at its best when Union’s Jenna and Torres’ Darcy are onscreen.
What can I say about these two actresses, who revel in their roles as frenemies? It’s worth pointing out the chillness of their exchanged glances when Jenna asks Darcy for a job. There’s also the sharpness of their banter, laced with the acidity of shared history and resentment. Not to mention the outfits, which gesture at their different takes on a similar maximalist aesthetic.
Their feud goes back decades, its contours familiar. The two women started their careers together, but Jenna was always getting the jobs and the men. It took a bit of work for Darcy to make her own name (although that didn’t heal the chip on her shoulder). She makes Jenna beg for the job — a bit of humiliation in exchange for a favor. Union is at home in her role as a steely media worker overcoming haters and detractors; she saunters in and out of the Darzine offices with a confidence that recalls her Being Mary Jane days.
Things are looking up for Jenna after she lands the new job. Her friends take her out for a celebratory night at a glamorous penthouse party, where she meets a charming, much younger man (Keith Powers). But Jenna runs out of the party before their steamy make-out session can really go anywhere.
It’s not surprising when she runs into her mystery man at work the next day. Eric — that’s his name — is the magazine’s new videographer and, of course, Darcy’s son. Their mutual attraction looks more forbidden in the daylight hours. The Perfect Find is really about Jenna and Eric’s supposedly hot relationship, but after an electric opening with Jenna and Darcy, it’s hard not to wish it weren’t. Powers is buttery as Eric — smooth in his delivery and appropriately corny — but the screenplay doesn’t give him much to work with.
Despite the amount of time we spend with Jenna and Eric, as they gallivant across the city in search of ways to increase Darzine’s subscriptions, The Perfect Find shortchanges its raison d’être. The film blithely addresses the two-decade age difference between the romantic leads (this is also a problem of No Hard Feelings, although in that film the relationship is played off as a friendship), but Eric doesn’t get sufficiently fleshed out for us to understand what Jenna sees in him.
I couldn’t tell you what Eric really wants in a relationship or why he drives Jenna, in her words, “crazy.” This creates uneven chemistry between the two, which makes it hard to ride the waves of their relationship as they go from making out to bickering to genuinely falling in love.
Perrier’s direction — which pays sweet homage to romantic comedies and vintage Hollywood — makes up for the underdeveloped narrative and occasionally stiff performances from the supporting cast. She homes in on Eric and Jenna’s love of Greta Garbo and Nina Mae McKinney. She gives the couple space to talk about their interests (but again, I wish these conversations dug a bit deeper) and has editor Paul Millspaugh weave in archival clips of McKinney and scenes from Flesh and the Devil — another of our protagonists’ mutual loves.
Rather than distracting, these touches capture the trickiness of a recent trend of nostalgia and Black archival reclamation. Images from the past have taken on a peculiar role in the present, one that feels at once honorable and voyeuristic.
Eric and Jenna capitalize on this, using it to help boost Darzine’s subscriptions. They look for vintage resellers across the city and organize shoots and campaigns that bottle and sell this nostalgia. It’s a brief, secondary quest, but it does add some balance to The Perfect Find, lending depth to a relationship that can’t help but feel shallow, despite the film’s best intentions.
