Review of ‘Wish You Were Here’: One Night Can Change a Life

“Wish You Were Here” starts like many a modern adventure. Charlotte (Isabelle Fuhrman) has a terrible job with a terrible boss, at the kind of restaurant where she is forced to wear a stupid uniform and her hair always smells of grease. She lives with her best friend and colleague, Helen (Gabby Kono-Abdy), and feels speechless. The bleak dating situation doesn’t help, much to the chagrin of her parents (Jennifer Gray and Kelsey Grammer).

Then one evening, Charlotte meets a stranger named Adam (Mena Massoud) and, after some prompting, goes for a drink with him. She finds out he is an artist and finds his devil-may-care approach to life appealing. He keeps saying things like “I sleep when I’m dead” and “don’t think so much” and “life is short.” As the evening progresses, she becomes attracted to him – but by the next day, his personality has changed and she doesn’t hear from him again. Eventually, she starts dating another cute guy (Jimmie Fails) from the apps. But it turns out that Adam was carrying a secret, and it will change the course of her life.

“Wish You Were Here” is the directorial debut of Julia Stiles, who wrote the script with Renée Carlino, the author of the novel on which the film is based. It is unabashedly a dizzying romance that places Charlotte in the middle of two men who represent two paths for her life.

It is also – spoiler ahead – working in a long tradition of romances where two people fall in love, but one partner has a terminal illness and their life together ends before it can really begin. (Think “Love Story,” “Shadowlands,” “A Walk to Remember” and “Me Before You,” among dozens of others.) For some viewers, this is an all-too-real and resonant plot point, an experience that left them profoundly changed .

But judging by the way it’s implemented in romance novels and movies, it also represents something of a fantasy for others who have never faced that tragedy head-on. Perhaps there is something melancholic yet appealing about the idea of ​​a passionate romance that speeds up time and leaves one person with only difficult but beautiful memories, instead of the banalities of everyday life that come with a long partnership. It’s the more dramatic equivalent of the romantic comedy that tends to end when the couple meets, but vanishes all that comes after.

To the credit of “Wish You Were Here,” the film acknowledges this fact about Adam and Charlotte’s romance. As her mother says late in the film, “He never had the chance to annoy you. You never had the chance to fight.” With some annoyance she adds, “I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”

That said, fans of the trope will likely find “Wish You Were Here” appealing. But for me it took a while to figure out why it doesn’t really work. I’ve found Fuhrman’s performances appealing in the past, especially in the excellent 2021 drama “The Novice,” in which she plays an obsessed college freshman who joins the rowing team and becomes fixated on a teammate.

She’s perfectly fine as Charlotte in this film, morphing from kind of snarky to kind of sweet, but the rest of the film never quite locks into place. The fault seems to lie in the chemistry, not just between the leads – it’s hard to believe that Charlotte and Adam have the connection on their night together that the film insists on – but between all the characters. For most of the film, family and friends exchange what are meant to be witty banter. But something about the pacing feels off: too many pauses, not enough of the momentum needed to make the film sing.

There is another issue that left me cold. Early on, Charlotte insists that “finding a guy on a dating app isn’t going to give me direction in my life.” If you’re well-versed in the rules of the genre, you know this is meant as dramatic irony. But by the end of “Wish You Were Here,” I still wasn’t convinced that she had actually found direction and purpose. I hadn’t been convinced that either she or Adam were as remarkable as they insist the other is. After all, a romance depends on the audience also falling in love with the characters. Maybe we just didn’t have enough time together.

Wish you were here
Rated PG-13 for death and dying, plus some adult behavior. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.