AFTER: No Hero Could Save It

Every decade, there is a movie about a young person coming of age, falling in love, trying to figure out who they are and all of the usual issues that come up in that time of transition. Whenever a film with this type of plot line is released, the actors and eras may change, but the recipe stays the same.

Based on the series of young adult books by Anna Todd, After tells the story of a college student  (Josephine Langford) who meets a guy (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin) who changed her life and way of thinking so much, that she summarized her years based on who she was prior to him coming into her life and following.

Full disclosure: I didn’t have high expectations going into this based on the trailer or the synopsis that I read. It also doesn’t help the cause when films with this exact same plot device are made and remade an insane amount of times. I will stress that those subterranean expectations were, in fact, met.

Once Upon a Time in Georgia

We are introduced to the young Tessa (Langford), who is going off to school! Helping her move into her college dorm is her mother (Selma Blair) and boyfriend. As most of us who have gone off to college will attest to, you are in an entirely different world. Her mother (and me in the audience) immediately took a dislike to her new roommate. With her ripped clothes, bad attitude and offering of pot, that character came off as quite obnoxious and disrespectful, and judging from that encounter, you could sense that you were off to a not-so-great start.

When Tessa meets Hardin (Fiennes-Tiffin), there’s some mysterious, inexplicable force pushing her toward him. It’s almost guttural, primal. Is this attraction due to raging hormones? Is it because she has freedom from the confines of her home life? They cross paths time and time again. Obviously, she falls for him and over the 90 or so minutes of this movie, we’re subjected to what I found to be the most frivolous, fruitless, clichéd plot and dialogue that I’ve seen in a long time.

Navigating life during your first year of college is difficult enough, and you would think that this film would demonstrate what that entails in a cohesive manner, but that was not the case. The entire film had a cloud of vagueness hanging over it the entire time, which was quite off-putting.

The Heart Wants What it Wants

We don’t get any true rationale as to their attraction to one another (even though I perceived it as being completely one-sided), we don’t see them having any real things in common, and we simply don’t get why they are put together. All this alleged attraction was through staring and (not so) surprisingly very little, yet completely inane conversation. The only genuine thing we learn about him is that his father (Peter Gallagher) was a right cad who did not treat his mother well. As for Tessa, her big reveal is how she has to live up to the expectations set by her mother, who had sacrificed her own dreams as a single parent.

Once Tessa’s helicopter mother walks in on them together and cuts off her daughter (presumably to put her back in line and on the right track), Hardin then propositions Tessa to live together in an off-campus apartment for the rest of the year.

Prince Charming wasn’t so Gallant

As one would expect, this story tries to be all rainbows and unicorns, but after Tessa loses her virginity to Hardin, a shock is around the corner. The kindest, most diplomatic way that I can describe the inevitable plot twist is as a low rent Cruel Intentions knockoff. The boy that she decided to change everything for was less than genuine! Who didn’t see that coming? Tessa’s complete shift in personality revolved around this person that we learned almost nothing about. What did they think was going to occur?

Toward the end of the film, her obvious and expected outbursts of anger, fueled by hurt and betrayal, cast a dark shadow. However, in those final moments, a seemingly magnanimous gesture made by this boy as to what he feels for her brings us to an abrupt, ambiguous ending. Now, did I want them to get back together at the end? I wasn’t that invested in the story, so I could care less.

I didn’t feel any connection to the characters. Sure, you pity this girl for about five minutes when you realize that she trusted the wrong people and fell hard for a collegiate Casanova. Call it naïveté, call it idiocy, call it kids just being kids. I call all of it unnecessary, stupid, and pointless.  I felt my mind wandering constantly and really wanted some character to talk some sense into this girl, because she had none.

Frankly, I was bored. I was over the entire film very quickly, and the fact that Tessa ended up shacking up with some kid that she barely knew because he liked Wuthering Heights and was a brooder didn’t make me sympathize with her or even care. Admittingly, Josephine Langford’s performance had a couple of good moments, but they couldn’t inflate this flat balloon of a story. As a nephew to Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, Fiennes-Tiffin has some big shoes to fill as a part of this well-regarded family of actors, but this role was simply stagnant. As they move forward in this profession, let’s see what the cinematic fates have in store for them.

The adults in this film really added little to the story. In addition to Blair and Gallagher, Jennifer Beals appears as the new wife of Gallagher’s character. For these three actors who have proven their abilities repeatedly over at least the last 20 years, these characters seemed to be completely clueless as to what’s going on and offered no real meatiness to the exposition.

Happily Never After?

I understand what this movie was meant to showcase. Tessa was coming into her own as a young woman and met someone she thought was a kindred spirit, but has to learn that all too common lesson that she may have been wrong. However, the production team simply executed it poorly. Yes, young adult love stories will always have an audience, but while this book series apparently has a rabid fan base, the script was trite, formulaic, and lacking in any kind of sparkle.

This movie was not enlightening, amusing or moving. Nor was it ground-breaking or earth-shattering. Following my viewing of this film, I learned that the After book series was crafted as One Direction/Harry Styles fan fiction. While the demographic of this film is obviously teens and college students, there are so many other coming of age/adult awakening/young love/personal discovery movies that are far superior. Maybe if I were a 19 or 20 year old girl, I would have appreciated it more. Actually, I wouldn’t have.

Have you seen After? What coming of age films do you think are thematically similar?

After was released in the United States on April 12th, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLta4nDM10