Movie Review: 'Come Find Me' is a Baffling Mother-Daughter Drama

Come Find Me (2023)

Directed by Daniel Poliner

Written by Daniel Poliner

Starring Victoria Cartagena, Sol Miranda, Tovah Feldshuh

Release Date January 13th, 2023

Published January 9th, 2023

Come Find Me is based off of a short film that writer-director Daniel Poliner had made a few years back. That film starred Sol Miranda, beloved character actress from The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, among other shows, as a principal at a struggling New York City middle school. Wanting to give Miranda a larger platform to show off her skills, Poliner expanded the original short film by adding in the story of the daughter of his original main character, here played by Victoria Cartegena.

It's a lovely motivation to want to do something to showcase a talent you respect but the result is a deeply confounding drama that shifts in time and space so often as to completely lose the point and purpose of the story. The characters seem to know what's going but they don't do very well to let those of us in the audience in on what is happening. Come Find Me is filled with what appears to be ideas about mothers and daughters, domestic abuse, confronting death, and other such ideas but none of the ideas make much sense as the movie descends into a series of repeated scenes that I think were shifting in time, maybe?

Come Find Me opens on Christina (Victoria Cartegena), a lawyer on the verge of making partner but questioning her future. Christina is back home in New York City for a big case involving a bank. Meanwhile, she's also plagued by something happening back in California where a pro-bono client is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend and has just found out that she's pregnant. Victoria is also pregnant and is rather ambivalent about that fact. She's in a new relationship with a fellow lawyer back in California and worried about what being pregnant might do to this new relationship and her future as a lawyer.

Also, while Victoria is in New York, she's avoiding her mother, Gloria (Miranda). Gloria is a very involved mom, a long-time teacher and now principal who gets very involved in the lives of her students. This, in the past, caused a rift between mother and daughter after Gloria had Christina attend private school instead of the struggling middle school where she worked. Christina would have preferred to be close to her mom during this time.

As Christina is struggling through a case that could make her career, she's also dealing with her mother's finances, much to her mother's disdain. It's all very dramatic and weighing on Christina's conscience as she's also waiting for word on what is happening with her pregnancy. This all comes to a head at the end of the first act of Come Find Me which then abruptly shifts to two years in the future and becomes a movie about Gloria and not Christina.

Yes, starting the second act, we are on one of the final days of Gloria's career as a principal. The movie changes protagonists and style as Gloria's last day becomes Groundhog Day, repeating over and over again with new lessons for Gloria to learn each time. These repeated days build toward Christina's wedding day to the man who had impregnated her two years earlier. What we are supposed to learn from any of these repeated days is deeply unclear.

Come Find Me is a baffling film. The straightforward drama of the first act shifting without warning to the time shifting, repeating days motif of the second act boggles the mind. The choice to switch from Christina as the lead character to Gloria as the lead character has no motivation whatsoever, and while the acting is never bad, the switch is just so strange as to render the good work meaningless. I was lost throughout the second and third act of Come Find Me as I kept wondering what was happening with Christina while the movie kept burying Gloria in the Groundhog Day motif of the second and third act.

Come Find Me is competent in terms of the technical work and the acting is really strong. Unfortunately, the movie gets desperately bogged down as it tries to become a completely different movie from the first act to the final two acts. It's a weird choice that only pays off in frustration for those of us who are watching. I can appreciate what is intended in Come Find Me, a story about mothers and daughters, and big life changing moments, but I am simply to put off by the massive shifts in storytelling to come anywhere near recommending it.

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