Rated: M
Directed by: Justin Baldoni
Written by: Justin Baldoni & Tobias Iaconis
Produced by: Cathy Shulman, Justin Baldoni
Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hébert Gregory, Paraminder Nagra, Claire Forlani.
Based on the fact people suffering from cystic fibrosis can’t touch each other because of risk of contamination, transference of bacteria; infection, Five Feet Apart is a romance between two teens: cute-as-a-button Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), who deals with her illness by controlling everything in her environment; and rebel, Will (Cole Sprouse) who now carries the bacteria strain Burkholderia cepacia, or B. cepacia for short, making any chance of lung transplant impossible.
Added to a bleak future, the bacteria’s easily transferred by casual contact, so the CF sufferers must stay six feet apart.
You’ll find out why the film’s named Five Feet Apart if you decide to expose yourself, not to the bacteria, but a film made specifically to make you cry, using every trick in the book.
Writer and director Justin Baldoni came up with the idea of this romance while shooting his 2012 series My Last Days.
While filming an episode about CF he met Claire Wineland, “One day I asked Claire if she’d ever dated anybody with CF. Claire kind of looked at me like I was stupid.
She said, ‘of course not’
And I said, ‘wait, why not?’
That’s when she explained that people living with CF can’t get closer than six feet because they could pass on dangerous bacteria to people with CF.
Once she said that, I had so many reactions,” he recalls.
Five Feet Apart is set in a hospital following CF sufferers while they contemplate their mortality. Even with a lung transplant, the shelf-life of the new lungs are five years, while waiting to die, drowning in their own secretions.
Walking into this film, I wondered if I was going to get sucky, cheesy, teary or romantic. None of these options was particularly appealing.
And I have to say the film is all the above.
My God, people were sobbing in the cinema.
I personally couldn’t wait until it was over.
If you like a romance, then the idea of lovers falling for each other but unable to touch is a potent idea.
Forbidden fruit and all that.
And the character, Poe (Moises Arias), Stella’s best gay buddy coming out with statements about Stella’s anal-retentive behaviour helped lighten the film, a bit: ‘I know you Stella, organising a med cart is like foreplay’.
And Cole Sprouse as Will is dreamy – even with nasal tubing.
But the whole film is riddled with slow motion takes with the underlying cheesy soundtrack.
I know I know, Brian Tyler is a very famous composer (of over 70 films including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World and recently Crazy Rich Asians featuring a big band jazz and romantic string score that was voted to the 2019 Oscar shortlist for Best Score…!); but it felt so contrived, to me…
Just to re-cap: Teens, sick in hospital, fall in love, but if they kiss, they will die. All set to that teen romance music – sobbing with tubing inserted and attached to a ventilator included.