23-year-old Owen works as a sound engineer at a student union bar at the fictional Manchester City University. One night he meets a girl and falls in love, only to have her vanish, leaving him with nothing but her first name, "Emily," and a phone number. The next morning, he tries to text Emily, only to discover that the number was mistyped. Mocked by his older brother, he resolves to track down the mysterious woman he barely knows and begin a real pursuit that will pull him into a web of doubt, memory, and obsession.
Meanwhile, third-year psychology student Emily Raine is navigating the brutal pressure of finishing a thesis that could unlock a prestigious job in Manchester. Her core belief is that love can be a kind of madness and a vestigial evolutionary impulse, a theory she hopes to test in a very personal way. When Owen shows up in her class asking for Emily, she sees an opportunity: he becomes the perfect subject for her study, a living experiment that could reveal whether romance is more science than fate. In the face of stern ethical concerns from her professor and distanced flatmates, she decides to befriend the man under the pretense of helping him locate the original Emily, weaving a plan that blends curiosity, risk, and growing attraction.
What follows is a series of misadventures grounded in clever social experiments and filmed with a wry, affectionate humor. Emily befriends Owen while steering his quest, and she orchestrates an anonymous mass email to every girl named Emily registered at the university in an attempt to provoke a real connection. The situation explodes into campus controversy, and the Student Union President Emily Thewlis launches a campaign against the anonymous emailer, dubbed "Email Guy." The controversy pushes Owen to go on a podcast and perform a song he wrote for the missing Emily, a performance that unexpectedly goes viral and coils the situation even tighter around him. A raucous, crowded party of Emilies becomes the catalyst for a dramatic encounter: he’s discovered by Emily Thewlis and chased away, forcing him to flee with Emily Raine in tow.
As the dust settles, Owen’s job is terminated, and the two students—now entangled in choices, fame, and consequence—begin to draw closer. He takes her to a show, and their bond deepens into something more intimate and real, a quiet counterpoint to the chaos that swirled around them. Yet a further twist arrives when Owen is contacted by the Emily he originally met—the woman who introduced the possibility of their connection, a complicated mix named Amelie. He agrees to meet Amelie, but their conversation is interrupted by people who recognize him as the infamous email prankster, and the weight of public scrutiny makes them uneasy about a future together. They part ways, knowing their romance will be hard to sustain under watchful eyes.
Back in the academic world, Emily Raine completes her project with hours to spare and attends a leavers’ ball, where she tries to show she’s ready to move on without Owen. She even ends a long-running relationship with Tristan, attempting to forge her own path. In a moment of impulsive faith, she runs to find Owen, only to see him in a moment of closeness with Amelie. Returning to her flat, she discovers Owen waiting there, and the realization that her notes for the final degree project are in his hands leads to a bitter moment of heartbreak. He leaves, and she grapples with a painful loneliness that seems to mirror her own thesis on love’s risky edge.
Emily’s emotional arc culminates in a hard-won reconciliation. After a period of sorrow, she channels the same podcast platform that once fueled the chaos to admit her role in the events and to apologize to the person who matters most to her. In a gripping turn, she abandons her final presentation to search him out and make amends in person. The moment is tender and transformative: a long-awaited apology turns into a mutual confession, and they share a quiet kiss that seals their renewed feelings, suggesting that love—despite its chaos and misfires—can still be a kind of truth. The film ends on a note of fragile hope, with two people choosing each other despite everything that tried to pull them apart.
