Five Feet Apart (2019)
Directed by Justin Baldoni
Written by Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
Starring Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moises Arias
Release Date March 15th, 2019
Published March 15th 2019
Five Feet Apart stars the utterly brilliant Haley Lu Richardson in a story that is beneath her talent. Richardson stars as Stella Grant, a teenager coping with Cystic Fibrosis or CF. As we meet Stella, she is returning to the hospital with a new recurrence in her lifelong battle with CF. Stella is exceptionally familiar with this hospital, to the point that it appears as if they hold this room for her with her stuff already laid out. That could just be bad editing, but that’s how it plays.
Also back in the hospital is Poe (Moises Arias), a fellow CF patient. The two of them have been going through CF treatments together for their whole lives and I did like some of their chemistry, even if Poe’s homosexuality is awkwardly jammed into the story via some truly terrible dialogue. The movie needs us to not worry about Poe being heartbroken when we are introduced to Stella’s actual love interest, the dreamy, Will Newman (Cole Sprouse).
Will is a newcomer at this hospital having recently moved nearby with his single mother to take advantage of a drug trial that is Will’s last hope. While Stella can hope for new lungs that can buy her a few years of life, Will has a version of CF, called B-Cepacia, that is thus far incurable and means that he is not a candidate for new lungs. This has, quite reasonably, made Will an uncooperative patient who is simply waiting to die until he meets Stella.
Yes, this is one of THOSE movies, where pretty teens die amid their quirky attempts at creating romance in the face of death. What makes 5 Feet Apart borderline irresponsible is the central gimmick which the film rather carelessly flogs for forced drama. You see, CF patients are kept at a strict, 6 feet apart distance. CF patients are so vulnerable to each others strains of virus that incidental contact could inflame brand new infections.
This is especially dangerous because, as I mentioned, Will’s particular strain is even more deadly than those of Poe and Stella. Does this stop him from attempting to make contact and be around Stella? Of course not. Now, to be fair, the film does well to establish why Stella takes a particular interest in Will, beyond him being dreamy. The same sense that drives her to want to spend time in the NICU fawning over babies through a glass partition, draws her to the equally helpless hunk.
There is also a well established trope of teenagers with no control over their lives via disease or abuse or something in that vein who take chances at whatever might make their life a little normal. It’s normal for pretty teenagers to want to be desired by other pretty teenagers. It’s normal for them to want things that they cannot really have and take a few risks in order to steal what little of the thing they can of what they can’t have. I am on board with that aspect, but it’s handled rather clumsily here.
Five Feet Apart was directed by Justin Baldoni who counts on his resume a documentary in which he closely followed the life of a teenager with CF, among a group of patients with terminal disease. You can sense that he cares about getting the disease right, to a point. Baldoni appears to respect what goes into trying to survive CF for as long as one can. Sadly, the conventions of the modern medical drama crossed with the star-crossed teen romance doesn’t allow for the kind of care and nuance that Baldoni might want to bring to it.
What we get instead is a series of cliched romantic bits that double as unintentional thriller setpieces as we watch in horror as the failed blocking of the characters fails to keep them at the safe distance that the disease plot requires. Sure, they keep saying that they are five feet apart but often it doesn’t look that way. Take the bit they do with a pool cue. Stella claims that the pool cue is five feet long and they use it in a way that allows them to mimic holding hands. However, in more than one scene they are clearly holding the cue wrong and drawing each other too close.
This becomes a moot concern when they both leap into that swimming pool that all hospitals have. Why not just have them spit in each other's mouths for pete’s sake. Just because the pool is chlorinated doesn’t mean it’s safe. Then they start splashing each other with water. Are you kidding me? Perhaps my germaphobe tendencies are coming to the fore but this seems more than a little irresponsible. Never mind that these are two people who already struggle to breath now just jumping into a swimming pool and exerting themselves in a manner that would deeply stress their lungs.
I’m probably just being overly picky, but details matter and Five Feet Apart gets far too many details wrong. That, combined with the fact of the film’s treacly and contrived set pieces, such as a late in the game escape from the hospital that coincides with an important turn of the plot, turns this serviceable teen weepie into something rather insufferable by the end. Five Feet Apart pushes the wrong buttons far too often for my taste, even as star Haley Lu Richardson does so many things right.
Richardson is an exceptional young actress and proves herself to be far more interesting and intelligent than the movie she is stranded within. If you want to see Richardson at her best seek out 2017’s Columbus with her and John Cho. That film is exceptional in every way. I even wrote a loving tribute to the film’s remarkable use of the language of film that you can read if you click here. There is also her remarkably charming and hilarious performance in last year’s criminal under seen, Support the Girls, for even more great Haley Lu Richardson. My review of that movie is linked he
