Like Crazy.

You guys ready for some brand spanking new art cinema?!

Going into this I have to say I was worried. Even as a film student I can't stand French New Wave and so when that title lingers around a film, I generally avoid. But then there was other things that started to drag me in, mainly that the script was entirely improvised and the director based the film on his own romance with his ex wife. Although I guess it's a bad start when you realise it's his exwife. Also look, the film has River Song, Mystique and Chekov, how bad could this be?!

The improvisation is hit and miss, at best. Some scenes can be so incredibly awkward to watch and not in the romantic sense, in the just plain awkward sense that they are almost hard to watch and yet others it seems to heighten the chemistry to near explosive levels making the film seem so real.

This film has a certain beauty to it also. It uses many of the tropes of Indie Romance cinema and I guess you can't be more indie than improvising your lines... but also with a heavy mix of abstract art visuals. Almost going as far as to feel dream like. You know what it is like to fall in love, what it is like to start a new relationship - to discover a persons whole being, it is as if reality itself has fallen away around you. It's just us and nothing else. I think the film does a great job at capturing this. Then as the romance carries on and everything begins to fall apart, the film really captures the helplessness, the confusion. And then comes the finding someone else, knowing that you still love your ex it ended for reasons beyond your power, the film captures just how hard this is perfectly.

So aside from a British Girl named Anna falling in love with an American Boy named Jacob there isn't much plot here, the film just kinda drops you in there. Basically the girl overstays her visa and then can't see the boy, sad times. It'd be easy to argue that Anna makes a stupid decision, all she had to do was wait two and a half and she could come back to the US and be with Jacob again but grounded in the reality of love, I think most of us would have made the same choice Anna made. Although despite there being very little story the film still manages to dwindle in melodrama territory as their romance fails and falls apart.

As said, this was based on Drake Doremus' own experiences and it shows. He puts it to great use. The film is so grounded in reality, the emotions so real they almost feel tangible. It's hard to not be moved by this film if you've ever been in a relationship because it is all so relatable.

Anna and Jacob are separated by an ocean but even for two people, a couple, in one country, going to Uni is hard if they live at either end of that country. I really felt for Anna, I've been there. It made me think about when Christina used to come down on Friday's and stay until Monday's - it was more than half the week but because I knew it had to end, that she wasn't just down the street from me it never felt like our relationship was part of my life, it was like the weekend came and one life stopped and another started, the weekend finished and my other life continued. And these elements play a major role in this film.

I couldn't really feel bad for Jacob when he got a new girlfriend, Sam is played by Jennifer Lawrence who is incredibly attractive - and much, much more attractive than Felicity Jones, the girl who plays Anna. But ironically the guy Anna gets with instead of Jacob is much more attractive than Jacob as well. Maybe they are better off apart? Me and Christina were... probably.

I think one thing Doremus missed with his film is a chance to really create conflict between the US and the UK - in both settings they all live in such swanky places and it is always such nice weather I could barely tell when it changed between the two countries. I don't know if this was done on purpose with the whole 'when we are apart we were still together' thing but I really felt it didn't work - I'd like to have seen the differences of the two places played up more, maybe that'd explain why Jacob won't just come and live in London.

The second thing I felt Doremus missed out on is that ending with Anna and Jacob getting together in the end although it leaves it open enough to make the assumption it won't all work out - it at least ends with them being in the same space. I was so excited to finally see a romance in a movie that works like a real romance. Relationships fail, you move on, find other people you may have these occasional moments where you try again in that failed relationship but ultimately you'll find someone else and be happy that's how it works when you are young and in love, the film didn't show this though. I'd have liked it to end when they found other people and went their separate ways, only occasionally dropping a text to admit just how much they missed one another.

So do I recommend this? This clearly wasn't made with a mass audience in mind. The plot is paper thin, little happens outside the Indie Romance following life business and the film has the kind of artsy visuals that remind you you are watching a film. So with all that in mind, if you have no plans to leave the mainstream this film isn't for you. Even with this aside though as a film it has its fair share of problems beyond clearly appealing to a niche audience. But Like Crazy still manages to be a beautiful film and really captures the emotions of a first love and how it feels to fail, perfectly. So for everyone who is willing to try something out of the mainstream I implore you to give this a try.

Think About It!

-Locke