Take lovey-dovey canoodling, add a wheelchair and what you have is “Me Before You.” This best selling novel, was a top read for a while, and now people rave this film will be a new classic “Love Story.”
Luckily, many of the plot’s maudlin pitfalls are greatly mitigated by the film’s adorable utterly infectious leading lady. Emilia Clarke's performance is winningly immersed in charming gawkiness and heartfelt sincerity while sporting a deliriously kitschy wardrobe heavy on eye-popping primary colors and loud butterfly prints.
Of course, “Game of Thrones” devotees have long been bowing down before this British actress and her impressive display of bewitching bad-assery as the silver-haired dragon-keeper Daenerys Targaryen. We all should be thankful to those who voted her Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive last year—that Clarke turned down starring in “Fifty Shades of Grey” (too much nudity) and waited for this opportunity. But only those who are allergic to adorable clumsiness and dewy-eyed sincerity will be able to resist Clarke as Louisa, a sheltered small-town girl with a big personality, too few ambitions and deep concerns for her family’s economic welfare.
Ensconced in said fortress in his own stylish yet sterile bachelor pad cocoon is 30-ish Will Traynor, who once was a dashing financial whiz, devotee of extreme sports and bon vivant lover of ravishing women before he was left a quadriplegic two years earlier after a traffic accident. As played by Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair in “The Hunger Games” franchise), Will is initially toxic, filled with resentfulness and bitterness over losing his once-wonderful life. He also struggles with chronic pain and finds little joy in existing anymore. That begins to slowly—very slowly—change once lovely Lou enters his world, after being hired by his concerned mother (Janet McTeer.)
Lou is supposedly a caretaker, although she soon discovers that there is an affable male nurse about to handle the more medical-related and personal hygiene concerns. Instead, she is intended to be a ray of sunshine to dispel the storm clouds that lend to their son’s sagging spirits and boost his desire to live. With a considerable arsenal of withering sarcastic retorts at his surely disposal, Will puts up quite a defense. But one rainy day, he decides to watch a French DVD—“Of Gods and Men,” about Trappist monks living in war-torn Algeria—and the ice between him and Lou begins to melt after he learns she has never seen a subtitled movie before.
There are some roadblocks that aren’t as easy to overcome—such as Lou’s clearly incompatible long-distance-runner boyfriend and the fact that Will learns his pre-accident girlfriend is engaged to marry one of his best friends. Then a rather dire agenda of Will’s is revealed, one that will not be exposed here though it is unfortunately treated with all the ham-fisted tentativeness of the worst of those Nicholas Sparks adaptations. This causes Lou to double down on making Will happy by taking him to Mozart concerts, heading to the racetrack and going on a swoony trip to Mallorca. Do they fall for each other? Mais oui.
