A difficult subject handled well

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2018)

Who would have thought there were so many laughs in a tale of someone paralysed from the neck down? Emilia (Game Of Thrones) Clarke encounters Sam (Hunger Games) Claflin while involved with Matthew (Harry Potter) Lewis in a film which has nothing to do with any of those fantasy franchises!
Lou is a tea shop waitress in a small rural English town. On losing her job she applies to become a carer for Will Traynor, paralysed in an accident. She doesn't realise what a moody unpleasant person he is, nor does she realise he is determined to commit assisted suicide at Dignitas in Switzerland. But as feelings start to grow between them, despite their intentions, could it be that Will might change his mind?
To be frank, this isn't my sort of film, a feeling which was reinforced within the first 10 minutes as Lou turned out to be unbearably cute, endlessly compassionate towards the quirky old lady patrons of the cafe, possessed of an apparently massive wardrobe of unbelievably eccentric clothing and, to cap it all, convinced that all problems could be solved with a Nice Cup Of Tea. She was a character drawn from the Wacky And Loveable Young Thing box of clichés.
And Sam Claflin's immobile moody young man was more credible, but no different in essence: Mr Rochester on wheels.
But the two of them turned out to have decent chemistry, and the film turned out to have far more laughs than I expected, so I stuck with it. And I'm glad I did. It used humour to soften the edges of what, in many ways, was a very brutal story. Despite the late Christopher Reeve's sterling efforts in support of stem cell research, there is still currently no coming back from catastrophic spinal cord injuries, something which Lou does not initially realise, and something which lies at the heart of the once athletic Will's decision.
Whether the burgeoning love between Will and Lou will be sufficient to overrule his decision is the dramatic focus of the story, and I would not want to spoiler the ending. But I will say that the circumstances and issues of quadriplegia and assisted suicide are presented unflinchingly, and without any moral judgement in either direction.
This is an easier, more accessible film than Whose Life Is It Anyway?, the only other film I'm aware of which addresses this issue, but it doesn't draw conclusions any more easily than that film did.
After being a bit queasily saccharine to start off with, Emilia Clarke settles in to the role, and both she and Claflin provide an effective emotional heart to the film: Janet McTeer and Charles Dance as Will's parents are also touching. The main location (Pembroke Castle) is gorgeous, and Clarke's wardrobe is (deliberately) awful. There was only one wrong note: I felt mild annoyance at the Traynor family's wealth. The ability to load Will onto a private jet and fly off to the Caribbean added a glib tone which I would have preferred to have been absent. The very end of the film fell into this category, too.
Overall, though, this addressed a difficult subject in an entertaining and credible way.