Do you remember when a while ago when there was a spate of classic literature as updated movies? Jane Austen’s Emma became Clueless, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew became Ten Things I Hate About You. It’s not a new idea, but it’s always fun when a director you like takes a look at a stodgy old classic and manages to do it one better.

In the Half of It, Alice Wu takes on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and does it more than one better. 

You may remember Alice Wu – she was the driving force behind Saving Face, which I found to be utterly delightful when I attended the premier in 2005. Folks were pretty happy to hear that she’d be behind this teen lesbian drama. Having watched it, I can recommend it highly.

As you may remember from Cyrano de Bergerac, the plot revolves around a beautiful girl, Aster, the big incoherent galumph who loves her, Paul, who hires Cyrano to write wooing words for him. In this case, Cyrano is played by Ellie Chu, a world-weary high school girl who makes money by writing other student’s papers and who avoids other people…but is also attracted to Aster.

In this version of the story, Aster is smart and sensitive and so is Ellie, while Paul really tries and it becomes almost impossible to dislike him.  The core of the story is the nature of love and, while I think they all get it completely wrong, it did remind me of something. In Volume 2 of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Sayaka spends a lot of time thinking about the components of attraction. Why does someone confess feelings to another, what are those feeling composed of? There is a similar train of thought here – what makes us “fall in love” or even be attracted to another person? Sayaka comes to an obvious conclusion – that for most people, looks are the way they judge other people’s worth. When we’re young, this is especially sensible as we don’t have a lot of other factors we can use. We don’t know who we are, how can we really understand someone else. When Sayaka is thinking about how sempai liked her because she was pretty, it was a clue to her superficiality that Sayaka ultimately understood.

For Ellie, the story is not a romance, but it is a journey of self-discovery. There is a key scene where she and Paul are practicing his conversational skills. Ellie says, “I don’t need speaking practice,” but as we watch them converse it is apparent that yes, yes she did. Maybe not so she had words, which is Paul’s need, but so that she learns how to be a better human by caring about other humans. She does learn.  By the end of the story, all of the principals have changed for the better and while no one ends up with anyone else, we can hope they will all live happily ever after in lives that are richer for having known and cared about each other.

Racism is mentioned but never becomes a specific issue, but there are enough cues that its not truly subtext, either. The systemic oppression of religious community is also constant background refrain. These are the ever-present cosmic microwave background of this story, an ever-present relic of societal pressure.

The acting was superlative. The story was tight. This was a decent watch and I’ll look forward to more from Alice Wu.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8 Very good until the end where it soared into sublime
Acting – 9
Story – 9 Great reworking of a brilliant, but deeply annoying classic
Lesbian – 6 Ellie’s journey is painful, but not excruciating.
Service – None

Overall – 9

Like I Am Not Okay With This, the story plumbs the depths of the torture of high school, with less blood.