Shailene Woodley is caught between two smouldering, bearded stools in an earnest drama that lacks storytelling nous
There’s a lot going on in
Drake Doremus’s flawed, serious-minded movie about relationships and personal growth – more going on, in fact, that can be successfully expressed in the running time. But this is a decently intended film from a director whose 2011 drama Like Crazy I liked very much.
Daph (Shailene Woodley) is, in the words of the song, torn between two lovers. Coming off a traumatic breakup, she has quit her
Job and left her apartment in LA and returned to live, mortifyingly, in the pool-house belonging to her married sister Billie (Lindsay Sloane) and quite close to her demanding mother Sue (Wendie Malick). But at a party Daph meets two unfeasibly handsome guys who are best
Friends and totally into her: soulful intellectual Jack (Jamie Dornan) and moody bad boy Frank (Sebastian Stan).