Love can happen at any time or place and to anyone. Sometimes there’s a long, slow period of courtship and sometimes there’s an immediate attraction, a lightning bolt that strikes a person to let them know that they’ve just met their one person. But does the lighting always strike both people? This is the conflict at the centre of Young Werther—a film about a manic pixie dream boy who arrives in Toronto, meets a girl, and falls in immediate, unrequited love.
Douglas Booth stars as Werther, a free-spirited and mildly narcissistic young man who arrives in Toronto to procure a sculpture for his mother from his aunt. This is meant to be a quick stop on his way to a European summer with his best friend Paul (Jaouhar Ben Ayed), a hypochondriac who can barely stand to be present in or leave his hotel room. On his first day, he meets Charlotte (Alison Pill), who captures his imagination and heart. There’s a problem, though, in that Charlotte is engaged to Albert (Patrick J. Adams), a well-to-do lawyer focused on his work to nearly the point of neglect for her. So in love is Werther that he insinuates himself into their lives, becoming friends with both of them and becoming a constant companion to Charlotte.
If this sounds a bit like a novel from the 1800s, that’s because it (nearly) is. Despite being set in contemporary Toronto, the film is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Goethe, and there are a multitude of touches that make this adaptation a little quirky and a lot twee. Much of the decor is mid-century, and dress is more formal than most wear today. The script is a mixture of modern slang and antiquated vernacular and cadence, and the characters’ activities tend to be the kinds of things one would imagine aristocrats doing in the late 18th century.
This could very easily end up being too gimmicky, but each of the actors understands the assignment and their dedication to the bit makes it work. Booth is wonderful as the central character. His Werther walks a fine line between the kind of whimsical naive goofball that would have existed in the 1770s and the kind that exists today. He’s impulsive and foolish, but also heartfelt and kind, and it’s very easy to root for him. He’s at his best delivering the madcap dialogue of a naive young man in love, and later as a slightly less naive young man with a wounded heart. He’s a manic pixie dream boy living in a manic pixie Toronto, and he holds the film together.
Link: https://thatshelf.com/young-werther-review-a-delightful-modernization-of-its-source-material/
Young Werther Review: A Delightful Modernization of Its Source Material | That Shelf
