Where do I begin?
It is taking a lot for me to not compare this movie to the recent romance film I watched, but like Me Before You this one jumped around A TON. Actually this one definitely jumped around more. From past to present to future to present to past. While some of this jumping did make sense or give a partial back story that was highly necessary to describe the characters that were just thrown at the audience. The romance in this film seemed to be more lust than love courtesy of the lack of character development. Overall this movie was okay, but certainly not my cup of tea. So with that out of the way let’s dive in.
What this movie lacked in early character development, it made up for in metaphors, weird imagery, and full frontal shots of pretty much all of the main characters. Seriously, with all of the underlying meanings of this film a film studies class would be busy for at least a month! I enjoy that the movie had depth to it to make up for the constant jumping around of the story line. The movie starts off by bringing you into the sex life of two of the four main characters and are swiftly met with the other two joining in. While at first the movie was a peaceful scene in Italy it was quickly and sharply disturbed by the likes of Ralph Fiennes’ character Harry. The flamboyant showman brings you into the life of a rock star by constantly causing a scene wherever he is. Along with him comes his daughter played by Dakota Johnson. Her character seems to be a wonderful example of a femme fatal for a romance movie. It’s almost as if Harry brought her in to stir things up in the marriage of the two star crossed lovers we saw in the beginning of the film.
As the film progresses the audience is further met by confusion as we try to understand the motives of every character. Each scene that could potentially provide further detail into their backgrounds quickly ends with a cliffhanger as a way to promote thought and allow the audience to create their own theories as to what happened. As stated before this film was not my cup of tea and seemed to drag on up until the random curveball thrown right into the audience’s ribcage. It went from long drawn out cliché to sudden confusion and chaos. This movie captivated me at the end and actually had me looking into the underlying meanings that were hidden throughout. As a final note I suppose the end of the movie solved the problems of most of the characters and as such the end of the movie felt rather fulfilling.
This film also comes with basic special features which includes: Promotional Featurettes of each of the 4 main characters, Theatrical Trailer, Film Sneak Peaks, and a Gallery. These features did not really add anything to the film, but if looked at prior to the film could provide context to the characters earlier on that seemed to be missing in the movie.
