Emily, the feature length debut from director Ryan Graves, takes a tiny-by-design story and earnestly goes deep, exploring the destructive impulses, badly timed stabs at nobility, and increasingly mixed signals of a couple on the brink. Without showy declarations of intent or roof-raising histrionics, it captures how people can be perfect together, until they aren’t. Set in Portland, the plot follows a young married couple (Michael Draper and Rachael Perrell Fosket) seemingly content with their extremely Northwest careers—technical writing for him, coffee shop for her—and hosting the occasional Bible study night in their realistically cramped apartment. Then he begins to question things. Everything, really.

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Note: on Friday Feb 3 and Saturday Feb 4, director Ryan Graves, producer Kelly Morgan McCrillis, and lead actors Rachael Perrell Fosket and Michael Joseph Draper will be in attendance at the Grand Illusion. by Andrew Wright