Five Feet Apart

The teen-weepie arms race first set in motion by The Fault in Our Stars comes to a head with the weapons-grade tear­jerk­er Five Feet Apart. Telegenic ado­les­cents have been drop­ping like flies as of late, but Justin Baldoni’s film ups the ante by deal­ing not just one but both of its leads a life-threat­en­ing ill­ness. And because that con­di­tion hap­pens to be cys­tic fibro­sis, which makes patients cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to each other’s germs, all skin-on-skin con­tact has been med­ical­ly forbidden.

The same high­er truth guid­ing the epic yearn­ing of Twi­light under­girds the sto­ry of starstruck crush­es Stel­la (Haley Lu Richard­son) and Will (Cole Sprouse): when faced with the choice between a hookup and con­tin­ued life, high school­ers will always choose the former.

Although a less insuf­fer­able entry into this par­tic­u­lar sub­genre, the now cus­tom­ary ​“tor­tured romance too pure to last” rou­tine doesn’t quite work this time around. The film’s main strength is its young leads, both of whom eas­i­ly clear the bar of ​‘pass­able’ that the script sets for them. Richard­son and Sprouse are each sad­dled with a stock char­ac­ter, yet they enact them with enough skill and earnest­ness to reestab­lish why these arche­types have stood the test of time.

He’s the art­sy lon­er with a rebel­lious side, flout­ing the rules to gain some sem­blance of con­trol over a high­ly reg­i­ment­ed life of pill sched­ules and pre-planned recre­ation time. She’s the OCD-adja­cent Type A per­son­al­i­ty who clings to the rules at the expense of feel­ing tru­ly alive. We know all this because the char­ac­ters define them­selves this way near­ly ver­ba­tim, but meant-to-be is meant-to-be, and the actors make us want them to be happy.

The good­will built up by Sprouse (who’s doing James Dean in scare quotes) and Richard­son (who keeps teach­ing audi­ences that sun­ny girls with bub­bly dis­po­si­tions can nonethe­less con­tain pro­fun­di­ty and depth of feel­ing) goes a long way, but not far enough to absolve the film of its many minor sins. Among them: a gay BFF dis­posed of when the descend­ing arc of the plot calls for it; a black nurse who is made to utter the phrase, ​“Oh, hell naw!”; and dia­logue that may have very well been writ­ten by Gmail’s auto-sug­ges­tion fea­ture. We may want to over­look these things, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not there.

The rom-com genre suc­ceeds pri­mar­i­ly on the basis of giv­ing its audi­ence what they already know they want, and its dis­tant cousin the rom-traum fol­lows the same rubric. This film is a deliv­ery sys­tem for pathos, a machine that cre­ates sen­ti­ment, and it per­forms its intend­ed func­tion smooth­ly. Still, like Stel­la and Will, we’re left want­i­ng some­thing more. These kids can’t set­tle for sur­viv­ing – they have to live. Yet just as they deserve a fuller life, we deserve a fuller piece of art.