Si tu savais

The Half of It is certainly a beautiful story about love, friendship and longing. It is a very relatable story about the process of discovering love and what comes with it. The acting is splendid and writer/director Alice Wu is very assertive in both capacities.

The story follows Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), a shy and introverted, straight "A" student, in her senior year, helping a friend, Paul, to capture the attention of the girl of his dreams, Aster. Initially, Ellie writes just one letter, but the story evolves into an exchange of text messages before their first date. During the journey, the characters discover the truth of the stress and challenges of courtship.

The film starts with a beautiful, artsy animation and excellent voice over work, guiding us into the mysteries of love at a very young age. The Half of It is a very well narrated story, keeping you intrigued, making you wanting to know more about the characters and how they will end up. The editing and music are very interconnected and they work in perfect harmony, turning into amazing storytelling.

I enjoyed the acting and the honesty of Leah Lewis' portrayal of a very timid, but determined girl. I love Paul naiveté and his struggle to communicate and show his emotions and how his innocence contrasts with Ellie's intelligence. Despite their differences they become friends, which is one of my favorite aspects of the film. I also love Collin Chou who plays Ellie's dad. He barely speaks English but he's really funny. He portrays a very loving and kind man and wants what's best for his daughter. Ellie's Dad loves classic films and, throughout the movie, there are several references to art in different disciplines like painting and poetry. This makes the film feel very grounded. "The Best Part," as Ellie's Dad refers when interrupted when watching his cinema classics, is when Ellie and Aster are in a secret lake and just talking. The scene itself is beautiful and the acting feels so natural. I love how this scene is shot and found it really relaxing.

The Half of It is not the typical high school movie, because in almost every high school movie there is a popular girl, a shy nerdy girl with lots of clichés and no substance. But in this movie the characters are real, current and deep.

The message of this film is "be the best version of you." Ellie used to be an artist and one of the things she learns is that "you can have a good painting, but to make it a great one you need to make a bold stroke." I think what she means by "bold stroke" is the best version that you can possibly be of yourself. Also we hear that "love is the journey we pursue with determination."

This film is wonderful! I could watch it a million times and still be entertained. I give The Half of It 5 out of 5 stars and recommended it for ages 12 to 18.

Reviewed by Zoe C., KIDS FIRST! Film Critics. For more reviews by youth, visit kidsfirst dot org.

I'm really liking this recent trend of teen romances that take an insightful look at the nature of love. Following on from the likes of To All The Boys I've Loved Before, Every Day, and Love, Simon, The Half Of It is an earnest and perceptive high school romantic drama.

Saying that, however, it's nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is. While its focus on the nature of love is engrossing at times, the film regularly attempts to deconstruct romantic tropes, yet falls into the trap of using them itself.

And that's a real shame, because there are things about The Half Of It that are a real breath of fresh air in this genre. I love the way that it shies away from a generic story about the high school social ladder, and I absolutely love the lead performance by Leah Lewis.

But this film just doesn't hit home on the deeper level it really needs to. It undermines its often genuinely insightful perspective on love with either cheesy or predictable plot twists and narrative devices.

There are times when the film forges its own path a little more, particularly in a wonderful aside in the early third act where Lewis and her crush, played by Alexxis Lemire, spend time together. However, as a part of the film's overarching romantic narrative, it doesn't hit home quite as strongly.

That's why I found The Half Of It such a disappointing watch. It has some wonderful moments that should stand among the best in modern teen romances, while Leah Lewis' assured and charismatic yet strikingly vulnerable performance is enormously memorable.

But in the midst of a story that doesn't really work, and a perspective on love that's not quite as clever as it thinks it is, the film really doesn't have the resonance and insight it's aiming for.

Not every gay person has to go through the "self-identification"stage, and I was impressed that the film didn't exaggerate at this point. Because this is just a story about...love...

I'm in tears. I went into this movie expecting a lesbian love story after seeing the trailer. One might even say, the romances in the story were the least important. This is a love story, no doubt, but not what you would expect. It is a beautiful story about an unexpected friendship.

What I think the movie did especially well was that there was a really limited number of main characters and they had really put effort into creating the personalities for these characters. Usually characters like Aster (the beautiful love interest) are really vain and the viewer rarely gets to no them. The premise is also amazing in its simplicity - a senior year of high school in a small town.

Moreover, acting, directing, sound music was amazing. There is really nothing I would change. I kept trying to guess the plot subconsiously, but I never guessed right. I think the story wrapped up beautifully, maybe not in the traditional sense of happy ending but in its own way.

There are lots of things to like in this riff on Cyrano de Bergerac.

Often, it is the new material, the things that differentiate it from Cyrano's plot line, that I found the most interesting. Such as Paul's doubts about his ability to love someone in an intelligent way. Christian, in Rostand's masterpiece, recognizes that he can't speak intelligently to women, but he never doubts his mind or the value of his love for Roxane. Paul in one moving scene doubts the validity of his romantic feelings for Aster because he thinks he's too dumb to really love well. That's a very sad moment, and something no man or woman should ever feel.

The same-sex themes that run through this movie are, in principle, not in Rostand's original, but they're certainly not foreign to it either. When Cyrano first proposes to Christian that they work together to win Roxane's love, it's hard not to suspect that Cyrano also has some sort of interest in Christian as well, though he may be unaware of it.

The performances of the three main roles here are good. I found Daniel Diemer particularly good as the Christian whose mind has not been developed, but who does indeed develop some in the course of the movie. His role could have been a two-dimensional caricature like the fireman Christian in the movie *Roxane*, but Diemer - and Alice Wu's script - make it more nuanced than that. Leah Lewis is also very good as the female Cyrano who, unlike the male original, comes to a realization of her feelings for the Roxane only once she starts to help Paul/Christian express his.

There are definitely weak parts to this movie. Trig's character is over-the-top stereotype/caricature,as are most of the rest of the townfolk. His more or less equivalent in the play, de Guiche, is more interesting for being more complex. Similarly, the way Ellie wins over her sadly xenophobic classmates with an unexceptional performance of an unexceptional song is too fast and complete to be convincing. The turnarounds at the end of the movie, especially Paul's with regard to his own homophobia, also happen too fast and too neatly. They could have been motivated earlier in the movie had they been thought out more. While the script, pace some of the previous reviewers, is generally very intelligent, it is lacking in that respect. It takes too long to work things out, and then the resolution of the conflicts happens too quickly.

It might also have helped if we had seen why Aster allowed herself to be claimed by Trig. That didn't seem convincing to me either.

Still, for only the second movie by the writer-director, Alice Wu, she got a lot right, and sometimes very impressively so.

This is definitely a movie to be watched at home, in my opinion. I can't see most audiences sitting through it in a theater. But watched at home, with perhaps one break to get a snack, it is an interesting and original riff on Rostand's great masterpiece.