Paper Heart

Paper Heart (2009) is Nicholas Jasenovec's mockumentary-flavored comedy, free to watch online on iFILM. Comedian Charlyne Yi plays a version of herself who flatly admits she doesn't believe in love — then drives across America to find out whether she's wrong.

Armed with a camera, she quizzes ministers, divorce lawyers, chemists, romance novelists, bikers and a playground full of kids, each one defining the feeling on their own terms. Meanwhile a halting, half-scripted romance with Michael Cera starts to bloom off to the side. The film never tells you where the documentary stops and the screenplay begins, and that's the joke.

Homemade puppet reenactments, mumbled dialogue and a gentle mumblecore deadpan run through the whole thing; it took the screenwriting prize at Sundance 2009. Small, sweet and quietly melancholy rather than loud. Stream Paper Heart online on iFILM.