Fantastical romantic comedies are trending right now. The Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz allegory The Lobster translates the loneliness and othering of single people into an alternate reality where the unattached are transformed into actual animals. No Stranger Than Love adds a different whimsical element to the search for companionship. In this film, a young woman named Lucy (Alison Brie) confesses her feelings for her married boyfriend, Clint (Colin Hanks). The moment she does, she dooms him to some strange fate. A hole literally opens up in the middle of her living room, swallowing Clint completely. Lucy and Clint can hear one another, but they don't know where he is or how to get him out. To complicate matters, Clint's bookie Rydell (Justin Chatwin) shows up in town because Clint owes him money. Clint's disappearance forces Rydell and Lucy to spend a lot of time together; and, well, stranger things have happened.
Brie has the doe eyes and tinkling voice of a cartoon heroine, which makes her ideal to play Lucy, the sweetheart of her town. Since wrapping up her breakout TV roles as Type-A college student Annie Edison on Community and Pete's poised ex-wife Trudie on Mad Men, Brie has appeared in feature comedies like How To Be Single and Get A Job; lent her voice to video games and the Netflix animated series BoJack Horsemen; and is helping to fill the hole Downton Abbey's conclusion has left with the period Amazon series Doctor Thorne. Chatwin is best known for his role as the inscrutable Steve/Jimmy on the Showtime dramedy Shameless. And Hanks is currently starring in the ensemble sitcom Life In Pieces. That's not too shabby of a cast for the debut feature of 32-year-old filmmaker Nick Wernham.
In the exclusive clip above, Lucy finds Rydell hiding in her car. The bookie is ducking attention because the cops are beginning to link his presence in town with Clint's disappearance. "I have no where else to go!" he apologizes. "Everyone is after me." Lucy tells him that the cops called her too, "to ask about you." Rydell wants to hide out in Lucy's house, but she's resistant. And though Rydell didn't "do anything" to Clint, he's well aware that he has no solid proof that he didn't. Will Lucy tell Rydell the truth about Clint's bizarre, metaphysical prison to get him out of trouble?
No Stranger Than Love is out in theaters and on Video On Demand on June 17.
Image: Momentum Pictures
