But she perseveres, and it’s at the top of the museum, after her exhausting climb that reminds her of her fragility, and while listening to recorded voices reading passages from Frank’s diary, that Hazel finally realizes she’s in love with Gus, and she kisses him for the first time. It’s like this: In Amsterdam, Hazel and Gus visit the Anne Frank museum, and it’s a real chore for Hazel, what with all the stairs, some narrow, steep, ladderlike, and unfriendly to a young woman with bad lungs lugging an oxygen tank. (Woodley gets it, though: she has an almost Gus-like perfect poise in capturing an inner turmoil that even Hazel herself doesn’t quite understand.) In fact, the most important scene in the film, the one that is most pertinent to Hazel’s predicament, slips by almost uncommented upon… and it’s a sure bet that even Hazel doesn’t recognize what’s really going on with her then. (Elgort is genuinely adorable, and he makes it difficult not to like his Gus.) As Hazel had promised us in the voiceover that opens the film, her story is never sugarcoated, and director Josh Boone never lets this become the sticky, sappy mess it might have been. The unlikeliness of Gus’s worldliness and poise is the least plausible thing about this charming, heartfelt film… and since it is pleasant fantasy, it’s eminently forgivable.
Hazel has a lot of issues, of course, like how she’s hesitant to get close to anyone because of the imminent-death thing, but she and Gus end up bonding over a novel titled Imperial Affliction that she’s obsessed with, and much of the story revolves around a Make-a-Wish-type trip to Amsterdam to meet its reclusive author (Willem Dafoe: Nymphomaniac, Out of the Furnace) and grill him about the book’s intriguing and infuriating ending, which cuts off midsentence. And he is instantly smitten with Hazel, and says sweet, flirty things that are way too sophisticated and confident for such a young man (he’s a little older than Hazel, but not by much) to woo her.Īnd that’s the fantasy: a cute, smart guy who really sees you (and isn’t put off by, say, your ubiquitous breathing tube, a stand-in for whatever it is that makes a girl feel weird and unattractive), who is persistent but not creepy in pursuing you, and - this is the best part - likes to read (a stand-in for “shares whatever your passion is,” though since this is based on a beloved bestselling book, it’s a fair guess that the most devoted fans of this story will be voracious readers like its protagonist). He was only there to back up a friend he’s actually fine - a past bout with the big C has left him “part cyborg” (he has a partial amputation of one leg and wears a prosthetic) - but he’s been in remission for a good while now. No, the fantasy is Gus (Ansel Elgort: Divergent, Carrie), whom she meets at a support group for teens with cancer. Oh, not the cancer, of course: nobody dreams about being terminally ill, or having to deal with crap like dragging around a tank of oxygen just so you can keep going, as 18ish Hazel (Shailene Woodley: Divergent, The Spectacular Now) has to do her lungs are a mess from her cancer, and she could die at pretty much any time. Yes, it’s a teenaged girl’s romantic fantasy.
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
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