Monday, February 25, 2019

Romancefest 2019: Like Crazy

Directed by Drake Doremus
Written by Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones
Starring Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence
U.S., 2011

The budding romance of two college students becomes complicated when one of them overstays her visa and finds herself stuck in the U.K. and unable to return to the U.S.

This movie was a little sad to watch because it stars the late, great Anton Yelchin who died young in a freak accident. He doesn’t have much to work with here, and yet he shows exactly why he had a long, promising career ahead of him, imbuing an underwritten character with maybe not something you’d call depth, but definitely three dimensions. That’s because the character himself might be a little shallow – to the movie’s credit, it’s ambiguous, almost as if the filmmakers don’t want to take a side. This is either the story of how difficult it is for two young lovers to be separated from each other, or it’s the story of how difficult it is to commit when you sort of have one foot out the door. I imagine if these characters were in their 30s instead of their 20s it would play differently, but as it is, we’re left wondering if what we’ve just seen is the triumph of love or just two people experiencing their first bout of settling for “good enough.”

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