Not your banal weepie; far better

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2014)

Over the last couple of decades, terminal-disease-at-youthful-romances are dime-a-dozen in the proliferated Korean flick market, escalating audience symptoms from indigestion to constipation. "The fault in our stars", you probably have heard, despite the subject matter, is not one of those.
There is one very interesting quote (the circumstances for which are incidental and omitted here): between the 3 of us, we have 5 legs, 4 eyes and 2.5 pair of lungs. The three people are the protagonists Gus (Ansel Elgort, with a smile that wins all), Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Gus's delightful sidekick Isaac (Nat Wolff, equally delightful), all cancer patients. Gus had one leg amputated from just above the knee; Hazel for all intents and purposes has a plastic oxygen tube anchored to her nostrils all the time (oxygen supplied by a portable cylinder she drags around); Isaac had lost his left eye at the beginning of the movie and then loses the right in the middle of it. Gus has been free from a relapse for a few years; Hazel's situation is "stable"; while sacrificing both eyes appeared to have preserved Issac's life. But unfortunately, as we all know, nothing is really certain in the fantastic realm of cancer-land.
Gus and Hazel meet at a cancer support group and eventually fall in love. This is not something new to the cinematic world so I won't elaborate the details. One thing I want to say is Woodley and Elgort have set a new bar for the meaning of "chemistry" in acting together. Separately, they are equally superb. On Hazel's side, another wonderful dimension is in Laura Dern's top-notch portrayal of Hazel's mother Frannie. While this is not a particularly manipulated tearjerker, tear will flow, even more so in the mother-daughter scenes than the lovers' scenes.
(additional SPOILER warning)
What makes this movie stand out, however, is the reality and cruelty it does not hold back from depicting. A lot of movies with a similar theme would have as the focal point a "last wish" sort of scenario, unabashedly manipulated to give an uplifting conclusion. In "faults", Hazel has a dream which Gus and Frannie help to realize â€“ to visit an author named Van Houten (a brilliantly casted Willem Dafoe) in Amsterdam. Hazel, in her sickness, clings to a book by Van Houten about a girl who eventually died of cancer. What Hazel (and Gus also) wants to do is ask Van Houten face-to-face when happened to the rest of the people surrounding the girl after her death. To cut a long story short, the three have a dream-like trip to Amsterdam where the young couple is treated to a romantic dinner by the author before the fateful visit the next day. This is where the movie shines: a rude awakening that all these nice correspondence and gestures are offered only by the author's kind-hearted mate. Van Houten turns out to be an obnoxious, ultra-cynical drunk, to such an extent of extracting from our lovely heroine the only four-letter word that appears in the entire movie.
All these happen only in the middle of the movie. Ironically, this "common enemy" becomes a trigger for the young couple to let go of all their inhibitions and let their love flow. The rest of the movie follows a somewhat familiar trajectory. There is a plot twist which may be unfamiliar to some but I, for one, have seen it elsewhere.
Doubtless, there will be discussions emerging from the theatre surrounding thing such as what makes Hazel and Gus tick, is Van Houton truly a villain or just a realistic depiction of a normal human being etc etc. But one thing is certain: you would want to see more of Shailene Woodley's movies, the "Divergent" series aside. Something Oscar-worthy.