Me Before You is a
polished Hollywood tearjerker, a romantic drama ready to load up the
sentimentality necessary to manipulate every last drop from its audience’s
eyes. What it doesn’t have is the touch of grit needed to sell its pain. This
British romantic drama is smooth and warm, the sort of sturdy, composed, and
cautious studio effort that’s a tad too reserved to get the job done, but
awfully pleasant as it goes. The movie, adapted by Jojo Moyes from her novel of
the same name, is about Lou (Game of
Thrones’ Emilia Clarke), a young
woman who desperately needs a job to take care of her poor family. Her dad’s
out of work and her older sister is a single mother trying to go back to
school. They’re in bad financial shape. So it’s a good thing a job placement
service gets her connected with a local rich couple (Janet McTeer and Charles
Dance) looking for a caretaker for their son, Will (Hunger Games’ Sam Claflin), who was an active young gent before he was
paralyzed in an accident two years prior.
Calling it a romantic drama tips its hand. It is a movie
where the characters can’t see what the audience can plainly tell. It’s obvious
where the whole thing’s headed. The result is just waiting around for the
people involved to catch up and realize what genre they’re playing in: the
doomed romance with a medical bent, like Love
Story and The Fault in Our Stars before
it. At first Will, depressed and unhappily resigned to his quadriplegic status,
is prickly and unhappy about his latest caretaker. His home health aide (Stephen
Peacocke) is to take care of the bathing and changing. It’s Lou’s job to simply
keep him company and make sure he gets regular activity and medication. She’s
plucky enough and charming enough that eventually, despite his best efforts, he
doesn’t mind having her around. The brewing affection between the two of them
is inevitable, but still touching. A great deal of the appeal rests with Emilia
Clarke, who plays sweet and adorable, crinkling her face, wearing primary
colors and floral patterns, putting on a chipper smile day after day. She’s
clearly the ray of sunshine his gloomy outlook needs.
From cautious, tentative friendship to full on flirtation,
the relationship becomes meaningful for both. Interestingly, it never quite
becomes as romantic as you might suspect, as Will keeps Lou at a slight
distance even when they’re at their closest. He feels inadequate, still
mourning his mobility, feeling trapped because he can’t move anything below his
neck. This has the unfortunate side effect of allowing the movie to treat a
person with disabilities as if he’s a diminished person. Some characters ask if
he’ll be getting back to work, but he’ll hear none of it. He’s simply too
frustrated. No matter how happy being around Lou makes him, it won’t make up
for his traumatic injuries. It allows his disability and his depression to
become one, and incurable, as if it’s inherently a fate worse than death, while
turning him into only an object by which her story of self-empowerment is
enabled. Even in its loveliest moments – a spin on the dance floor, she in his
lap while the camera is locked on the side of the wheelchair – it doesn’t stop
bumping up against what it falsely perceives as limits to his ability to have a
“normal” life.
The movie is also hopelessly dreamy about their connection.
It asks an audience to appreciate how much better he is when she’s around, and
how angry he is about not being who he used to be, while completely eliding some
facts of his condition. It’s all too stiff upper lip, with suffering spoken of,
but not seen. Coy cuts take us away from the messier elements of his daily
life, and the set design keeps him behind closed doors for the real moments of
pain and inconvenience. This isn’t a movie about a woman growing to love a man with a disability; it’s about a woman
who loves a man despite his
disability, as she’s conveniently allowed to skip all the most intense parts of
helping him. We’re told he’s in pain, but he never shows the camera. We’re told
he’s in a state of despair no emotional connection can cure, and yet there are
only hints of such deep depression in his frowning into the middle distance.
And then, in climactic moments involving a medical procedure, the scene fades
out before the lump in my throat could properly form.
So it’s undercooked around the edges, and warm and gooey in
the center. But it’s also slickly produced and attractively photographed to be
sunny and bright, covered in soft coffeehouse soundtrack selections and wistful
montage. Director Thea Sharrock (who has worked in theater and on the BBC’s Call the Midwife) makes it a rosy
experience that can be effective in its falseness. I found myself on occasion sufficiently
convinced by the syrupy button pushing, especially in the first half, before
its nagging misjudgments start to pile up. Clarke and Claflin have fine
chemistry together, and scenes are allowed to sit between the two of them as
they draw closer, share space, and play out their maudlin dialogues. I wished
it could be more fully fleshed out, and more deeply felt. It’s hesitant to find
the real dark corners of its premise, the sharp jabs of pain sanded away until
what’s left is a gentle sinking into its watery-eyed finale. But in the
surface-minded approach it still manages to whip up enough sympathy for its
leads to nearly sell the whole experience.
