The title has an interesting connection to the story. Ben has been into music growing up and, starting when he was eleven, each year made a CD of the music he listened to during that year. It became a sort of music diary of his growing up. Near the end of this movie he gave Maisy one which he titled "Soundtrack to Sixteen."
Maisy and Ben are 16-yr-old London school students, but they are played by actors born in 1993 which probably made them 26 during filming. Each lives a sort of boring life, inexperienced in the ways of romance, and studiously looking forward to college. They meet quite by accident at a party, then again later when they are on the same bus.
Ben wants to study Physics but isn't very good at the subject. But Maisy is and they help each other, as Ben is good at History. The movie pretty much covers the school year, announcing chapters by the month, then the days leading up to final exams.
The filmmakers use the technique of letting us hear the thoughts that Maisy and Ben are having during key scenes, reflecting their normal insecurities of kids that age. It almost follows the standard Hallmark process where two people meet, develop a relationship, have a falling out of sorts, then we all know what happens during the last minute of the movie.
I enjoyed the viewing as something different, and watching it reminded me of the study habits of cramming the night before the exam, something I was doing exactly 60 years ago as I began my first year of college.
The movie was written and directed by a young team of sisters, Hillary and Anna, The Shakespeare Sisters. So I would suppose that, although fictional, the story is pretty close to reality. In fact Hillary started her career in science, completing an undergrad in Physics at Imperial College, then a masters in Computer Science at Oxford. A close parallel to what Ben had wanted.
At home, streaming on Peacock.
