Typically, a romance feels so inevitable that it doesn’t matter what both celebration does, the universe simply retains pushing them again collectively. Hollywood romances are sometimes constructed on a formulation of “Man Will get Lady, Man Loses Lady, Man Will get Lady Again,” however the love tales that form us probably the most usually require operating via that cycle fairly just a few extra instances, with no ensures of completely satisfied endings.
The five-year romance between Charlie (Nick Robinson) and Harper (Emilia Jones) is nothing if not cyclical. It started as a highschool flirtation, with the 2 artsy misfits burning CDs of their favourite songs and leaving them in one another’s lockers, content material to let their favourite artists do the speaking at an age when the prospect of socializing with folks you want usually appears like social suicide. They reconnect at a university celebration, initially feigning forgetfulness till a well-placed tune on the aux wire makes it clear that their recollections of one another had been crystal clear.
That sparks a romance that sees them transfer to New Orleans collectively as Harper pursues her culinary goals, solely to search out that his lack of ambition and struggles with substance abuse are hurdles that their relationship isn’t robust sufficient to deal with. Years go by, and so they every construct their very own separate lives till one other spontaneous celebration encounter makes it clear that some emotions are more durable to overlook than your favourite tune.
That may sound like a spoiler-laden abstract of a complete film, however “Charlie Harper” author Tom Dean (who co-directs with Mac Eldridge) makes use of cyclical storytelling that offers you all of that data very early on. The movie alternates between the three “first” conferences between the doomed couple, who’re completely incapable of suppressing their mutual attraction — a minimum of, the primary three conferences, as a result of there’s each motive to consider it is going to occur once more after the film ends — slicing between the three legs of their relationship for instance that no quantity of evolving exterior circumstances can change the truth that we love who we love.
The chemistry between the 2 younger lovers is plain, however the wedges that finally drive them aside are current from the start. He’s a quintessential “I Can Repair Him” venture, good-looking and self-destructive with ache behind his stunning eyes and a style for poetry and literature regardless of residing in a trailer park with a historical past of melancholy and habit in his household. She’s an bold planner with goals of being among the best cooks on the earth, with the work ethic to do it. They’re drawn to one another as a result of they each see that there’s extra to the world than the unhappy little city they grew up in (and, let’s face it, as a result of they’re each sizzling), however her obsession with rising above her station was at all times going to conflict along with his seeming contentment to drink himself into an early grave.
Dean and Eldridge know tips on how to make a trendy movie that manipulatively tugs on all the appropriate emotional strings, and some tears will in all probability be shed on the “Charlie Harper” premiere. It’s not arduous to think about the movie discovering an viewers amongst youthful indie movie followers who both don’t bear in mind motion pictures like “(500) Days of Summer season” or are merely wanting to have one for their very own technology. These with a bit extra viewing expertise below their belts will in all probability develop bored of the movie’s dependence on cliches, because it usually appears like a bittersweet mixtape of outdated indie tropes: the manipulative energy of nostalgia, the ways in which seemingly inconsequential items of bodily media can change into formative recollections, the euphoric feeling of falling in love and fantasizing concerning the huge world ready for you outdoors your hometown, and the realizations that even when love wasn’t sufficient, relationships can nonetheless form us for the higher.
Some motion pictures get richer the extra time you sit with them, however “Charlie Harper” is the sort of movie whose affect will at all times be the strongest as you’re strolling out of the theater. The dearth of originality and occasional on-the-nose dialogue cancel out most of its rewatch worth, but it surely’s arduous to not be affected within the second by the sincerity of its storytelling and the chemistry between Robinson and Jones. There have been multitudes of flicks made concerning the poisonous younger romances that form us into the extra steady adults we finally change into, however the world will cease making them after they cease making us really feel issues. And “Charlie Harper” is proof that that day has not arrived but.
Grade: B-
“Charlie Harper” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant. It’s at the moment looking for U.S. distribution.
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