Você Nem Imagina

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.

The Half of It is solid. Yeah, it's not perfect but it takes a trope that has become repetitive over the years and puts its own spin on it. I'm talking about that trope where a person who's probably popular likes someone, but has nothing in common with them or is just plain dumb, and so they have to ask the less popular character for help... and the plot usually progresses in the same way too; the love interest realizes that the popular character is not who they have been falling for all along and then chooses the less popular one in the end. It's pretty basic stuff that has been seen over and over and over again. And movies have tried to take a spin on it before; Sierra Burgess Is A Loser being one of the latests examples. But while Sierra Burgess failed, The Half of It succeeds at making that spin compelling, insightful and just straight up wholesome. Honestly it's a very difficult trope to fix, especially with the changing times, a lot of people are sick of the manipulation that can take place in these types of stories, not to mention the lying and scheming. And what I think The Half of It gets right is the understanding that what can make or break this trope are the characters, their dynamics and their motivations. And oh my goodness the two main characters in this movie are a delight. Yeah they make mistakes, but it's usually never out of a place of malice or selfishness. And I believe that the development of their friendship is what makes this story worth watching. This is not just a cliché teen romance. It's a movie that tries its best to capture the essence of being a teenager navigating friendship, love and life in general; and honestly, I think it does a pretty good job at it.

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...

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.