Wake - OPENING NIGHT

Running time: 97 mins

Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "love is dead," director Ellie Kanner's (crazylove, Face to Face) third feature is a superbly crafted dark romantic comedy that reveals the future of the dating scene is not in bars, clubs or via the Internet?but at funerals.

Carys Reitman (Bijou Phillips - Choke, Almost Famous) is a smart, funny modern girl with one quirk?she regularly goes to the funerals of strangers. At one fateful funeral, she unexpectedly meets Tyler (Ian Somerhalder ? Pulse, Lost), a man mourning his fiancée. Despite the warnings of her undertaker best friend Shane (Danny Masterson - Yes Man, That 70s Show) and her roommate Lila (Marguerite Moreau - Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Easy), she finally finds herself connecting to someone for the first time. Searching for answers, Carys goes to see her estranged mother (Jane Seymour - Wedding Crashers, Live and Let Die) to confront her past. As she tries to open herself to the risks of love with Tyler, she realizes she may have more to fear than just a broken heart?

Phillips gives a spot-on performance that gives screenwriter Lennox Wiseley's intelligent and witty Carys an idiosyncratic charm. Additionally, Kanner's brilliant direction of a marvelous cast brings to life a captivating and highly relevant story about finding love in a modern world that often seems to want us to be alone.