Like Crazy (2011)

Never cross the border police.

Like an indie-framed mirror held up against my youth, this is a tale of long-distance love.

The kind of love that the rose-tinted telescope magnifies, and as with any fond-growing absent heart, it goes untouched by the day-to-day disappointing realities of life, and your lover-at-arms-length becomes this idealised superhuman partner.

I’ve often wondered if the propensity to look beyond your borders for love is a symptom of the saturation of romantic love forced down our teenage throats by novels and movies, of challenging, heartbreaking love that you need to fight for, that simply doesn’t exist when you date your neighbour or schoolyard chum.

Longing for a youthful ideal from afar sure beats soporific local indifference. But then you grow up, and realise that presence and companionship is actually the true foundation of love.

I digress, but all this preponderance, and experience, over the years has left me something of an expert on long-distance love, and I have to say, this film smacks the nail right on the head.

Barely a scene goes by that doesn’t echo some memory from my teens and early twenties, that, frankly, made for some uncomfortable viewing.

Anton Yelchin (who I’ve always had a soft spot for) and Felicity Jones do a phenomenal job of creating genuine and very ‘real’ characters, and as a result, reveal themselves to be slightly disappointing human beings that you don’t quite feel like rooting for.

My sympathy really only goes to Anton’s interim girlfriend who continually gets dumped – poor, lovely Jennifer Lawrence. Maybe it’s because in the Chalet Girl vs. Hunger Games heroine fight, I know who my money would go on.

So, a brilliantly realised, wonderfully performed and beautifully shot movie, but one that just left me a little cold.

WHAT I’VE LEARNT

• Never break the visa rules. You WILL regret it.
• Furniture design is a far sexier occupation that junior magazine writer.
• Jennifer Lawrence is pretty damn awesome.

WHEN TO WATCH

• When your latest internet beau just happens to be based overseas.

WHEN NOT TO WATCH

• The day after leaving your long-distance love at the airport where you had that rather uncomfortable, ‘well, do you want to see other people’ conversation.

POSTER QUOTE
“ Would you choose a whinging Brit over Jennifer Lawrence…?”