Review | Five Feet Apart film review: Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse in tear-jerking teen romance
- This against-the-odds love story between two teenagers born with cystic fibrosis turns out to be a touching and dignified romantic drama
- It also details the daily drudgery endured by those with CF, while not being mawkish
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3/5 stars
On the surface, Five Feet Apart has all the hallmarks of a saccharine experience. A romance between two teens born with cystic fibrosis (CF), it’s designed to pluck the heartstrings and swell those tear ducts.
And it does, quite expertly, in the hands of director Justin Baldoni. The conceit here is that those with CF are meant to keep six feet apart from others with the disease for fear of passing on life-threatening bacteria. That means no touching and certainly no kissing – quite the barrier in a love story.
Scripted by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis, the plot follows Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), a model patient who takes her meds on time, exercises and somehow remains happy – frequently posting upbeat videos on YouTube – even when she is confined to a hospital. While there for her latest “tune up”, she meets fellow CF sufferer, Will (Riverdale’s swoony hunk Cole Sprouse).
A cynical 17-year-old, Will refuses to comply with the complex regimen intended to keep him alive. Perturbed, Stella convinces him to take his pills, if only for her sake (he is obsessive-compulsive too, and his behaviour is messing with her head). He agrees, as long as she concedes to allowing him to sketch her.
It does not take long for the two to develop feelings for each other, barely able to keep their raging adolescent hormones in check. Stella even decides to “take a foot back”, standing – as the title suggests – just five feet apart, not six, and using a pool cue as a crude measuring stick.
While Baldoni does well to maintain visual interest in a film largely set within the pristine walls of a hospital, the story does lean on some all-too-familiar tropes. Moises Arias gets to play Stella’s gay best friend (no self-respecting teen romance would be without one) while Kimberly Hebert Gregory is equally lumbered with the bossy nurse – though both manage to find the humanity in their characters.
You might even say that the film is cynically hoping to replicate 2014’s mega-hit The Fault in Our Stars , with its star-crossed tale of adolescent cancer victims. But what Five Feet Apart does well is detail the daily drudgery endured by those with CF without ever turning it into a dreary disease-of-the-week movie.
Driven by the cute pairing of Sprouse and Richardson, who was featured in 2016 teen tale The Edge of Seventeen, this is a touching and dignified romantic drama.
