Tessa (19) has just moved into College, leaving her high school boyfriend, Noah, to wait in her hometown. She shares a room with Steph. Tessa refuses to kiss Hardin, a dashing guy, in a "truth or dare" game during a party. He invites her for a drive to a lake and she accepts, where they swim together. Slowly, she falls in love with him and they kiss, causing a break-up with Noah. When her mother threatens her to quit Hardin and study or she will cut off her money, Tessa refuses. She moves together with Hardin and loses her virginity. However, she finds out from Molly that Hardin just started a relationship as a bet. Even though Hardin admits he fell in love with her, Tessa rejects him. However, the two meet again at the lake.
An adaptation of Anna Todd's eponymous novel, this romance film is appropriately emotional, uncynical and honest, yet not that much inspired. Too much of its storyline seems like an ordinary teenage love story found a dime a dozen, just combined with the concept of that all-time classic "Dangerous Liaisons", to go somewhere new and do something fresh. The best parts are found in the first act, where the two main protagonists, Tessa and Hardin, show some moments of charming character development, as in the amusing sequence in the classroom where they are angrily debating over whether Elizabeth was in love with Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" or not. More of such moments would have been welcomed, since a fair share of scenes seem too melodramatic or sappy at times, with some questionable choices (would Tessa really allow for Hardin, a stranger to her, to drive her in his car in the middle of the woods?). It is interesting that the director Jenny Gage breaks with the "male gaze" tradition and instead focuses her camera shots into "female gaze" since she lingers more on the male body of her protagonist during love moments, than on the girl. While thin and overstretched at times, there is one beautiful moment of poetic romance: it is the one where the couple is in a bathtub, and Hardin is "typing" letters on her back with his finger, daring her to try to "decipher" what he wrote, and in one moment writes "I L-O-V-E Y-O-U" on her back.
Grade:++
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