The Starving Games
Real-life sweethearts Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi star in a fictionalized version of their romance in this indie semi-documentary comedy, written by Yi. Playing themselves, Yi and Cera embark on a scripted version of their own story. In the movie, Yi has agreed to be the subject of a documentary about her quest to discover if love really exists, since she’s never experienced it. As part of her participation in the project, she has a film crew follow her around throughout every new development in her love life — which gets complicated when she starts dating fellow comedian Cera. This portion of the film is all narrative, and was written into the script, but also as part of the documentary, Yi travels the country interviewing various people about their opinions and experiences with love, and these portions of the film are real — the interviewees are not actors. Melding truth and fantasy, Paper Heart uses equal parts comedy and realism to resolve the ultimate question of whether love is fact or fiction.