A tale of star-crossed lovers across war-torn countries, I’ll Find You is a throwback to the romantic epics that once dominated the box office, such as Titanic or The English Patient. Martha Coolidge’s flagrantly old-fashioned romance opens in a Polish music school where the talented violinists Rachel Rubin and Robert Pulaski turn from rivals to lovers as they grow up together. When they are older, Robert becomes a successful opera singer, and Rachel’s family pushes her to marry a young Jewish man she does not love. 

Adelaide Clemens and Leo Suter have a palpable connection that makes their gradual friendship becoming a profound love believable. Their affectionate and ingenuous performances reinforce the depth of their character’s devotion to each other as they are separated by grave circumstances. Rachel and her family are captured by the Nazis and taken to various concentration camps. As the title indicates, Robert spends the rest of the film on a winding journey on finding her. He hopes against all hope that she survives the Nazi’s cruelty. 

Music is the emotional tether between the couple and adds a sentimental resonance to I’ll Find You. The opera and classical music scenes are elegantly shot. They include Stellan Skarsgård as a kind opera singer who tries to help Robert by using his connections to the Nazis. Although the lip-synching is obvious, Suter’s soaring song performances capture the heart-wrenching emotions of being torn apart from his lover. I’ll Find You also educates audiences about the little-known fact that there were Jewish orchestras at concentration camps who performed for the Nazis. 

Coolidge’s film has a visual warmth that brings out the finely-crafted and detailed costumes and production design. WhileI’ll Find You avoids the more gritty horrors of the Holocaust, Coolidge authentically brings to life the confusing and painstaking process of tracking someone down in a period when technology did not make such things so simple. Made with a lush tenderness, I’ll Find You is a sweeping romance that is intense and compelling. It evokes a bygone era of filmmaking that has been sorely missing from cinema screens. 

I’ll Find You is now streaming on Prime Video, AppleTV, YouTube, and more.

by Caroline Madden

Caroline is the author of Springsteen as Soundtrack. Her favourite films include Dog Day Afternoon, Baby It’s You, Inside Llewyn Davis, and The Lord of the Rings. She is the Editor in Chief of Video Librarian. She has an MA degree in Cinema Studies from SCAD. You can follow her on Twitter @crolinss.