Review: Alice Wu Returns After 16 Years With THE HALF OF IT, And It Was Worth the Wait
Real teenage love is something difficult to capture. It is overdramatic, passionate, deep, confusing, shallow, and relentless all at the same time. The Half of it is not a typical romantic film, but an exploration and understanding of what deep seeding feelings can do to a young person. Alice Wu’s last film, Saving Face, came out in 2004. She has been out of the film industry for basically this whole time but came back to make this film. The Half Of It is a testament to her understanding of what makes a film good and what makes a film truly great.
To quickly overview the film, we follow Ellie as she deals with love, the love of others, and finding what love can and should be. Ellie is a wonderfully bright senior in high school who is debating staying in her small town with her father or going away to a larger and better college. The story obviously focuses much more on the relationships Ellie has with her classmates, but the connection to her father is still well explored through great visual storytelling. I won’t go into much else because it could really ruin the surprising and entertaining journey that Ellie goes on, just know that the plot and characters are the best part of this film.
The cinematography here is really great too. We don’t have any giant action pieces or crazy stunts, but the framing, camera angles, and shots all have great purpose and help tell the story. Leah Lewis as Ellie Chu is amazing. Her range of emotions, ability to convey thoughts and feelings through subtle expressions, and still be totally believable is outstanding. The other main and supporting actors all do very well in their positions. The main characters are really well fleshed out and very dynamic and deep. But a number of the supporting characters can be somewhat one dimensional and sometimes even cartoonish at times. The music and sound design here is great, but not profound. It all sounds like a great coming of age, teenage quirky drama soundtrack. Again, the music choices are really good, just a little lackluster because it sounds like every other indie teen movie.
The last thing to really address here in the review is the actual plot and why it stands out. From the beginning, Ellie lets the audience know that this isn’t a story that will end like others, and it doesn’t, thankfully. Wu is bold, daring, and takes some big risks in how she tells the story and where it ends up. There were many moments in the movie that made me physically gasp, yell out and wince from the sheer potency of awkwardness or bad and good decisions of characters, but in a very positive way. I became really invested in all the characters and was filled with joy when they were happy and sad when things didn’t work out for them. There are a few times that choices or scenes seem a little too far from reality. But they never ruin the movie, they just seem to stretch things just a tiny bit too far.
Overall this movie is an outstanding and bold choice for Alice Wu as she explores what love is and how we deal with it. Yes, a few things in the film are a little too much or slowly paced, but it doesn’t hinder the fantastic story, superb acting, and deeper messages.
Note: DON’T WATCH THE TRAILER! It gives away a lot, so just watch the movie.
