Myisha Nawar
Me Before You: Cinderella story meets end-of-life dialectic, wrapped up in a bubbly broody love triangle in which death is the third wheel, starring Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke as the caregiver of a quadriplegic, the Hunger Games’ Sam Claflin.
Mashed together by need-hers for a job, his for a friend-they are chalk and cheese but meant for each other. Far too much of this highgloss tearjerker proceeds as a by-the-numbers romantic fantasy which nudges the viewer every step of the way.
The drama opens with one of its most darting images: two lovers in a bed so white and fluffy it might be a cloud. Drop-dead handsome go-getter Will Traynor (Claflin) waking in his London dream pad beside his girlfriend (Vanessa Kirby) is starting just another usual, glamorous day. The opening section births the yin-yang between thirty something Will and 26 year old Lou (Clarke) with admirable economy. While he thrives in moneyed joie de vivre, she lives in her parents’ cooped up home and has a boyfriend (Matthew Lewis) who is cartoonishly wrong for her. When Lou and Will meet, he is almost completely paralyzed from an accident which cut short his seemingly unstoppable upward trajectory.