Cast: Emilia Clarke, Sam Clafin, Jenna Coleman, Janet McTeer, Charles Dance, Matthew Lewis, Steve Peacocke, Joanna Lumley
Director: Thea Sharrock
Louisa (Emilia Clarke) is a small-town waitress in England, whose family is suffering financially. After getting fired from her job, she gets signed up for a temporary but lucrative posting as a caretaker to a wealthy quadriplegic Will Traynor (Sam Clafin). Despite being inexperienced, Louisa proves competent at her job and the depressed Traynor slowly becomes sociable. But their friendship is fraught by personal tensions and by the revelation that Traynor is considering euthanasia. Louisa seeks to help him to recover and tries to bring hope in his life.
Me Before You is an adaptation of a romance novel by the same name by Jojo Moyes, and the movie has some of the virtues of a dramatically solid story, in that characterisation is consistent, well developed and that its particular points are properly achieved. The movie is essentially a fusion of two different genres — a romantic comedy with actual jokes and a disease movie. There are parts in the movie, the ones where we get to care about the characters, that sort of work as the makers ended. Yet in general the film is not wholly successful as either of the two genres.
Romantic comedies or stories are idealised and intensified relationships, magnifying those moments of contact and feelings out of all proportion. We get a few scenes in this film, such as one scene set in a castle, another at a dancing room where the two leads improbably dance while the man remains seated on his self-moving chair, but the key line is one that comes early in the film. Nathan (Steve Peacocke), Traynor’s doctor, when hiring Louisa for the post of caretaker confirms that her job is not to tend to Traynor physically, that is help him go to the bathroom or clean up after him.
This elision of a crucial part of any invalid’s existence makes the film’s story and sentiment a little dishonest. We are told repeatedly that Traynor’s condition as a quadriplegic is terrible for him, that it’s constantly painful, but what we see is a fairly well-groomed and handsome actor on a wheelchair, with the camera framed in a way that improbably still makes him look imposing and big. The movie has both, idealising the condition of a quadriplegic when inconvenient and verbally overcorrecting when it is convenient.
Any movie of this kind rises and falls on the strength of the actor. Emilia Clarke, who appeared in Terminator Genisys and the TV show Game of Thrones (alongside co-star Charles Dance who plays a small role as the hero’s father), plays a slightly different role than she is known for. She is quite good at comedy, especially the early parts as a warm but ditzy girl, wearing comically ugly clothes and over-sized shirts. She’s not convincing as a working-class girl but there’s a general compromise of verisimilitude overall.
Sam Clafin, the lead hero, has a weird role to play, on one hand he’s meant to be a sympathetic victim and on the other he has to be as romantic as DiCaprio in Titanic. He has good chemistry with Clarke but the role doesn’t give him much to do. The others are fine, and Matthew Lewis, Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter movies, is especially effective in a thankless role as the romantic false lead, being both goofy and empathetic in his small screentime. Joanna Lumley from The Wolf of Wall Street has a scene-stealing cameo. Me Before You is not entirely successful but it does have elements and moments of comedy, charm and romance, and is overall greatly improved by its cast.
The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
