A meter from you, review of Justin Baldoni's film with Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory and Elena Satine
Is it possible to love someone who cannot be touched?
Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) likes to have control over everything but cannot control her lungs which forced her to spend most of her life in the hospital. Above all, he needs to manage his space obsessively and remove any risk of infection that could endanger the lung transplant he has been waiting for years. In fact, Stella has cystic fibrosis and each patient in the ward, for safety reasons, has the obligation to respect the distance from one another to at least one and a half meters. Without exception whatsoever.
In the world of Stella, however, Will (Cole Sprouse) bursts in and the two adolescents, in common, initially only have the disease. She is a fighter, communicating with the world by telling the days spent in the hospital and posting videos on Youtube. He loves his family and friends, following medical treatment to the letter.
Will is exactly the opposite. He is resigned to the fact that death awaits him and seeks only to enjoy what remains of his life. Will stopped fighting.
Fatality however wants the two to fall in love, at that age in which everything is thought to be possible but, since they cannot touch each other, the boys create a space all their own that vanishes whenever the apprehensive nurse reminds him of the iron rule to be respected .
A meter away from you, based on the eponymous novel by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis, follows the path traced by films such as Colpa delle stelle (2014), Now is good (2012), Resta tomorrow (2014), We are everything ( 2017) and others. Some facts well, others a little less, but all with a single purpose: to hit the spectator.
Justin Baldoni, at his directorial debut and best known as an actor and for having participated in several TV series, manages to create the desired atmosphere here, and perhaps even goes further.
This story of adolescent love, in which the sense of death always flutters, highlights the importance of human contact with those we love.
The film emphatically invites the viewer to reflect on this, which often seems as trivial as breathing but which for them stops being a reflected and natural act becoming possible only with the help of artificial respirators. Just as it seems obvious to each of us to touch the person we love, but we can only understand it when it is forbidden.
It is a story suited above all to a young audience but capable of making even those who are clouded by everyday life reflect on the transience of life, in a world increasingly governed by practicality and feelings.
A meter away from you, even if with a fairly predictable ending, it gives amusing and emotional moments. With Stella and Will we understand that when we are forced to isolate ourselves and move away it is precisely at that moment that we need more physical contact, like the air we breathe to live.
They believe in love and believe that it can survive even at the "distance", but the expectation of death remains and strikes, and it is always a low blow.
I give a solid