ROMANTIC DRAMA; 1hr 26min
STARRING: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones
Gap year: Yelchin and Jones
The current of feeling between Los Angeles college students Jacob (Star Trek ’s Yelchin) and Anna (Chalet Girl ’s Jones) is instant and magnetic, captured with flowy, handheld-camera immediacy by director Drake Doremus. Anna is a Brit who writes, Jacob an American who makes beautiful furniture. They’re head over heels, which is touching to see, but the tyranny of distance is nipping at their heels. Having overstayed her student visa, Anna is denied re-entry to the US after a 10-week trip home to London. Serious bummer! The two do their utmost to keep their cross-continent spark alive but as Anna says, “It’s hard to keep stopping and starting.”
With some stories, what happens is nowhere near as important as the way it’s played out. The dizzy thrall and damning pitfalls of love is a tale as old as Father Time. But Doremus brings an improvisational freshness to it, and the young cast is completely at home with an emotional unfolding that is at once universal and completely theirs.
