DIR: Drake Doremus • WRI: Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones • PRO: Jonathan Schwartz, Andrea Sperling • DOP: John Guleserian • ED: Jonathan Alberts • DES: Katie Byron • Cast: Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin
British girl Anna (Felicity Jones) falls for American student Jacob (Anton Yelchin) while at college, and a whirlwind romance sweeps them both up. After a year together, Anna’s visa is up, and she decides to run the risk and stay with him in the States. But after visiting her family for a wedding, on her return to the US she is stopped at immigration and banned from returning for the foreseeable future. And so begins their extremely long distance relationship, being barely kept together by late night phone calls.
Playing like an unfunny version of 500 Days Of Summer, we get to see this couple’s happy times (when he sporadically comes to visit her in England) and their sad times (pretty much the rest of the movie), and the movie goes some way to reveal true insights into relationships, such as the ‘new’ girlfriend/boyfriend in these movies aren’t always the ‘villain’, as the immense time apart sees Jacob hooking up with his assistant Sam (Jennifer Lawrence) and Anna with her neighbour Simon (Charley Bewley), but they are still always in each other’s minds.
Writer/director Drake Doremus doesn’t get too caught up with any kind of aesthetic, just letting his more than capable cast carry the weight of the film, to the point that most of the dialogue was improvised by the actors themselves. But the relationship is played at once too intimate and too slight for the audience to feel properly involved in, and it’s hard to shrug the ‘So what?’ feeling come the end credits.
Rory Cashin
Rated 12A (see IFCO website for details)
Like Crazy is released on 27th January 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ZV-bwZmBw
