Five Feet Apart Movie Review

 FIVE FEET APART

Director : Justin Baldoni

Genre : Drama, Romance

Cast : Haley Lu Richardson (Stella), Cole Sprouse (Will), Moises Arias (Poe) and others

Release Date : March 15, 2019

Rating : 4.8/5

Duration : 1hr 57mins

Language : English

Reviewed By : Shravni D Borade

Breathe in deeply. Breathe in deeply. Those of us who have the privilege of taking our ability to breathe for granted get to pick and choose when we think about taking a breath: to relax, to sing, to blow up a balloon, to sprint. Every breath is a fight, a victory, and a cruel reminder that it can be the last for people who have lung disorders like cystic fibrosis (CF).

The life expectancy for people born with CF was 10 only a few decades ago. So, it has only been recently that individuals with CF, like the young adults in "Five Feet Apart," have lived long enough to fully comprehend their condition and its limits.

Stella (a radiant Haley Lu Richardson) enters the hospital as if it were her second home to receive treatment for an infection. Everyone on the medical staff is an old friend, particularly the caring nurse Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory). Stella is familiar with all the procedures and knows what to pack for solace, such as her pet panda, the laptop she uses to record her CF-related vlogs, and the images from her bedroom wall.

In the CF medical relay race, the best case scenario is always to last just long enough for better treatments to be developed. Stella is aware that her best case scenario, a lung transplant, may only be effective for five years.

Stella is aware that for the time being, feeling in charge of her "regimen" of care, maintaining the medication cart, consuming her medications with chocolate pudding, and visiting the neonatal intensive care unit infants are her best coping techniques.

Poe, her closest friend, is back in the hospital as well (Moises Arias). Will (Cole Sprouse), a different adolescent with CF, is also present to get an experimental medication. Will is a cynic and a rebel, in part because his prognosis is not as good, whereas Stella is extremely, even excessively, helpful in his therapy in the hopes of being able to have the lung transplant. Even if the medicine works, he is now ineligible for a transplant due to the B-cepacia infection. He promises to stick to his routine when Stella pushes him to if she'll let him sketch her.

The pair in a love story must always have a cause to be apart, and in this instance, that means physically separate. Patients with CF must maintain a distance of at least six feet between one another because of their susceptibility to infection. They are comparable to Romeo and Juliet if the Capulets were a brand-new set of lungs and the Montagues were microbes.

Latex gloves, no touching, and a constant distance of six feet. Stella states, "After all CF has stolen from me, I don't mind stealing one foot back," as she falls for Will. They go on a date using a five-foot pool cue to gauge their proximity while still inside the hospital's boundaries (because hospitals have swimming pools). Then, due to their youth, they take some extremely significant risks.