The Half of It

Teen movies love big trans­for­ma­tions: A hand­some jock enters a dorky outcast’s life. An unlike­ly romance leads to pop­u­lar­i­ty. The nerd’s life is changed for­ev­er. Final­ly! They’re cool. (The film’s ethos is still ​“be yourself.”)

But in The Half of It, our shy hero­ine, Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), nev­er takes off her dark-rimmed glass­es or undoes her low pony­tail. Instead of a splashy meta­mor­pho­sis, writer/​director Alice Wu forces her char­ac­ters to con­front parts of them­selves they would rather bury. For Ellie, the sole Chi­nese Amer­i­can stu­dent at her pre­dom­i­nant­ly white high school, and a clos­et­ed les­bian in a hyper-reli­gious small town, that requires some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent than a makeover montage.

This is the first fea­ture Wu has made since 2004’s Sav­ing Face, a rom-com inspired by her own expe­ri­ences com­ing out as a les­bian in the Asian Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. The Half of It grap­ples with sim­i­lar themes in a ​“Cyrano”-style love tri­an­gle: Lovesick ath­lete Paul Mun­sky (Daniel Diemer) wants to woo a pop­u­lar class­mate, Aster Flo­res (Alexxis Lemire), but isn’t great with words. Ellie ghost writes his texts in an attempt to make enough cash to pay her family’s elec­tric bills, but inad­ver­tent­ly falls in love with Aster too.

The Half of It is about the qui­et heartache of being an out­sider. Before meet­ing Paul, Ellie has no friends oth­er than her father, who rais­es her alone. Her class­mates refer to her as ​“the Chi­nese girl.” Ellie doesn’t dream past the bor­ders of her town, not even for col­lege. It’s iron­ic, con­sid­er­ing she and her dad run the city’s train sta­tion. Every morn­ing Ellie watch­es the trains ride to else­where, nev­er think­ing to buy a tick­et for herself.

It’s not until she finds a twin spir­it in Aster that she begins ask­ing the big ques­tions. ​“Love is being will­ing to ruin a good paint­ing, for a chance at a great one,” Ellie says. ​“Is this real­ly the biggest stroke you can make?”

The Half of It cares so deeply about its char­ac­ters, giv­ing them space to explore their com­plex­i­ties. Teen movies tend to dis­miss their sub­jects, espe­cial­ly when they’re young women, by using their emo­tions for punch­lines. But with Wu’s thought­ful script and Lewis’ empa­thet­ic per­for­mance, The Half of It joins films like Lady Bird and Eighth Grade in recog­nis­ing how cru­cial and for­ma­tive these expe­ri­ences are for their char­ac­ters – and for those watching.

Wu’s sto­ry lies at the inter­sec­tion of a lot of heavy themes: race, class, sex­u­al­i­ty, iden­ti­ty, friend­ship and love. At its heart, this film is val­i­da­tion for any­one who might be feel­ing Ellie’s resigned lone­li­ness. Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, it’s Paul who says it best: ​“It would suck to have to be pre­tend to be ​‘not you’ your whole life.”

The Half of It is released on Net­flix on 1 May.