I liked this even less than many other critical reviewers. Let's start with the nice things many say, that it has beautiful locations. Does it? I found it filmed in quite an uninspiring way, and generally that while Brighton could be a character, and at the least relative locations matter, it is all just window dressing, an arbitrary background.
Otherwise oddly shot a lot. For an intimate and tension filled romance, lots of relatively wide lenses and the camera positioned above the character's head, lots of panning to show us the important bits (because we're dumb, can't figure it out or wait 2 seconds to see what happens etc). It all feels remotely observational, narrative instead of involved.
I think the adaptation is horrid. It's the Reader's Digest summary of the novel, not a film adaptation, committing the sin of telling instead of showing far too much. Lots of talking, to tell us what the bad photography, indifferent geography, and jumpy editing doesn't let us see.
Which is all not helped by mostly horrid acting. No, not just Styles, but everyone acts like they just got the pages this morning, and we're in too much of a rush to bother getting to the emotional meat of the lines. Linus Roache, just for one example, is a completely good actor - I can't think of a time I didn't totally buy him, even just in some throwaway TV role - and somehow here he's the second best actor in the junior high school play.
I don't know what went wrong but for me, for the type of film it wanted to be, just about everything. Deeply disappointed, from what could have been and the glowing reviews from many others.
Otherwise oddly shot a lot. For an intimate and tension filled romance, lots of relatively wide lenses and the camera positioned above the character's head, lots of panning to show us the important bits (because we're dumb, can't figure it out or wait 2 seconds to see what happens etc). It all feels remotely observational, narrative instead of involved.
I think the adaptation is horrid. It's the Reader's Digest summary of the novel, not a film adaptation, committing the sin of telling instead of showing far too much. Lots of talking, to tell us what the bad photography, indifferent geography, and jumpy editing doesn't let us see.
Which is all not helped by mostly horrid acting. No, not just Styles, but everyone acts like they just got the pages this morning, and we're in too much of a rush to bother getting to the emotional meat of the lines. Linus Roache, just for one example, is a completely good actor - I can't think of a time I didn't totally buy him, even just in some throwaway TV role - and somehow here he's the second best actor in the junior high school play.
I don't know what went wrong but for me, for the type of film it wanted to be, just about everything. Deeply disappointed, from what could have been and the glowing reviews from many others.