Like Crazy
Felicity Jones is a formidable actress, indeed. And one that many people my age grew up with. The now Oscar Nominated performer, who put in a stellar turn alongside Oscar Winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything was once fouling up the hallways of Miss Cackle’s Academy as the snobbish bully Ethel Hallow. I know. That little tid-bit of IMDB information had me squealing with delight too. From become the scorn of young girls in the UK to becoming one of the hottest UK products to sweep America, Jones is set to have an excellent career - with Star Wars: Rogue One and more under her belt….
….And I still utterly refuse to believe that she is 31.
Like Crazy sees Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin play young couple Anna and Jacob who meet during her studying abroad in America. They connect instantly and spend the rest of their semester together until graduation. Unfortunately, summer means that Anna has to leave for England and the thought of one another leaving forces her to make a radical decision to stay - violating her Visa. When she returns to England for a Wedding, she is shocked to find that she can no longer enter America and the pair are distraught that they can’t regularly see each other. But can their love survive
The performances are what level this melodramatic independent flick because Jones and Yelchin have scintillating chemistry that fuses the plot with an air of enchantment. True, cynicism will take part of their passion and devotion to each other and hammer it as unrealistic. But the pair manage to gift the pulled apart couple with strain, raw elements and hope that rings around their eyes in exhaustion and tears. For most, being that far apart from one another is end game, yet here it is a wearied determination and the acting duo manage to evocatively tell it without overstating or saturating in monologue speeches set to a swell of classic music.
That’s not to say that there isn’t some enchanting elements to director Drake Doremus’ visuals. There is an abundance of colour here but told through soft delicate hues. He uses his camera work to enhance the story as well as contrast the different countries such as the haze of American summer with the greens and greys of English life. With small budget imagery with the grace of the story, originally written by the director and Ben York Jones, Doremus is a director with a keen eye for humanistic story telling through the language of camera lens, cinema scopes and more.
There has been a lot of debate as to whether the story is contrived or not, the aspect of love of years and miles titillating most people’s cynical side. Though arguably, the biggest piece of contention is how Anna levels up to Editor on a popular fashion website in a small amount of years, it still feels fresh and beats with somewhat of an originality alongside its ebb of sickly sappiness. Doremus is a fantastic director who is able to capture the emotions of love and lust, running them parallel to fear and abandon. His later work Breathe In, also staring Jones, is probably a better example of this yet Like Crazy’s charms manifest in a delectable way - so much so that it is impossible not to engage with the material.