Treads a fine line so that it really works

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2014)

This could so easily have gone wrong: a story about two teenagers facing life- threatening cancer risks being overly-sentimental but, while being a real tear-jerker, this treads the fine line with skill and warmth. Hazel has thyroid lesions which have metastasised to her lungs and throughout the film wears a breathing tube and lugs around a portable oxygen tank. Gus has n osteosarcoma condition which has stabilised after the amputation of one leg. They meet at a support group for youngsters experiencing cancer and her favourite novel, "An Imperial Affliction", takes them to Amsterdam where nothing goes as they expect.
Since the movie is based on a best-selling young adult novel by John Green, it will find a ready audience in spite of its serious subject, but those who don't know the novel (like me) will find this an impressive and moving work because of the fine acting by the two leads - Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, both of whom star in the "Divergent" series - and the assured direction by young Josh Boone. Of course, it is easy to be cynical about a film like this, dismissing it as mere manipulation, but ultimately all cinema, indeed all art, is manipulative and this is not a self-pitying, rather a life-affirming, tale.
Footnote: The title of the novel and the film comes from Shakespeare's "Julius Caeser" when Cassius declares: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings". For Hazel and Gus, their cancer is in the stars but their response to such tragedy is ultimately in themselves.