What is it about dying kids that invites the waterworks like nothing else? I knew was in trouble from the start when the movie freaking opens in a hospital ward. It’s not just that we’re in a hospital room, the subject of this piece quite clearly lives there. And she’s young. Oh no. That’s not right. People who live in the hospital ought to be personified wrinkles. Haley Lu Richardson has a smile that would make an “American Idol” blush.
Stella (Richardson) is 17 and has cystic fibrosis, which is incurable, fatal, and sucks ass. Those lucky enough to survive into their teens never leave the hospital; staying alive is a feat in and of itself. The day-to-day experience is a system of daily meds and experimental treatments. The kids know hospital practices, procedures, and medications better than they know phone apps. CF sufferers often have to wear masks for poor immune systems. Then there’s the coup de grâce: They can’t even come within six feet of a fellow CF inflicted or risk death. Simply put, CF people cannot handle the air breathed by other CF people. Now ain’t that a bitch?! You’re dying. You live your entire life in what amounts to a semi-benevolent prison ward, and the people closest to you cannot encroach a grown-up person-sized gap around you.
On the upside, CF isn’t one of those diseases where you already look like a walking corpse. Heck, you can have CF and even be hot like Richardson, or her future squeezeless squeeze, Will (Cole Sprouse). Not so much for Stella’s runty BFF, Poe (Moises Arias), this generation’s Jackie Earle Haley. Oooh, this guy is like a Republican nightmare: he’s Hispanic, gay, and abusing the health care system!
Back to Will; you know he’s in Stella’s orbit cuz 1) he looks like a young Johnny Depp and 2) he and Stella are immediately at odds upon meeting. Stella is a by-the-book girl, desperately clinging upon anal ways to claim every last second she has. Will, OTOH, has given up; he finds life fairly pointless, but concedes abiding by Stella’s regimen if she allows him to draw her. Yeah, there’s a fairly Titanic feel in this even though the two are far from attracted at this point.
So five feet in to Five Feet Apart, we have a deliberately manipulative setting and a predictable relationship developing. Geez, Jim, how did this film get you on its side? Very good question. I think it is essentially that the film didn’t cheat the relationship or the rules. Stella and Will are bound to fall for one another; what else have they got to do? And we need them to fall for one another for our own sanity. Can’t somebody doomed to die as a teen experience love once in life? What kind of monster denies that? Ah, but here’s the true tragedy, and the titular source: whatever Stella and Will feel for one another, they cannot touch. Six feet apart … at all times. I can only wonder at the horror of falling in love with somebody you never touch. It must be doubly aggravating when feelings are reciprocated. Hence, as a fan of life, I need these two to fall in love, but as a fan of film, I need these two to keep their distance. There’s your tightrope, walk it. Good luck.
The key to romance for me will always be I want to fall in love with the people falling in love. That’s going to be true whether the couple drive stock cars, harvest muesli, or fight aliens. This is the best part of Five Feet Apart, Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse are two of the easiest people to fall in love with in many moons. Is it because we feel for their dilemma? Is it because we love the taboo tragic tryst twixt Stella and Will or because we enjoy these two actors? Does it really matter?
♪Out here in the ward
I get meds with my board
I eat up enzymes with my jell-o
I don’t need to score
To find one I adore
He had me when coughing out, “hello”
You’ll cry
You’ll wonder why
You’re watching teenage deathland♫
Rated PG-13, 116 Minutes
Director: Justin Baldoni
Writer: Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
Genre: Tragiteens
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Girls who like to cry
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The dates they forced to come with them
♪ Parody Inspired by “Baba O’Riley”
