The very first thing to find out about “Charlie Harper” is that it’s not, actually, a sure Charlie Harper. Charlie (Nick Robinson) and Harper (Emilia Jones) are a pair who meet and break up at completely different levels over a five-year interval; The title of this sincerely melancholic debut characteristic from directing duo Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean implies that they’re two halves of a standard soul, whether or not they’re collectively or not. It is one romantic notion amongst many in a free-floating relationship drama, which makes use of an intuitively non-linear construction to enliven what’s in any other case an bizarre and pretty typical love story between two engaging however flawed folks. Robinson and Jones are a pleasant sufficient couple that “Charlie Harper” touches right here and there; making it attention-grabbing is a much bigger problem.
Shortly after its premiere finally yr’s Toronto Movie Competition, “Charlie Harper” was acquired for North America by newly minted distributor Row Ok Leisure; solely now, greater than a yr later, is it being launched in theaters. This delay one way or the other fits a narrative in regards to the time it takes for all times to fall into place, however the movie itself would not encourage a lot urgency. Extra more likely to be discovered by audiences on VOD, it zigzags with a sure grace between the highs and lows of the romance at its heart, however by no means musters a lot momentum and even a lot depth of emotion; we assume lengthy earlier than the top that our lovers are most likely not meant to be, and for this we might really feel a sure melancholic, self-conscious unhappiness. However our hearts do not break for them.
We naturally begin someplace in between: our introduction to the administrators shouldn’t be theirs. When Charlie approaches Harper in a dimly lit bar to introduce himself, she says that they’ve met earlier than, reminding him of their first assembly in highschool. But it surely’s simply one other spherical of a recreation they’ve already performed, with the shoe on the opposite foot, and once we return to that very same scene close to the top, we’re extra conscious of the load of what occurred between them. Beginning over as strangers can be smoother and simpler.
Shortly after, however a number of years earlier, a mirror picture of this scene sees Harper taunting Charlie with feigned disregard at a school social gathering on the night time of Barack Obama’s first presidential victory: a shared, youthful nonetheless historical past emerges, as does a historical past of relationship-defining songs, exchanged in unusual bodily codecs. (Their signature quantity is Brenda Lee’s “Break It to Me Gently” — how completely happy can a romance be when it is grounded in a heart-aching ballad?) He is a charismatic slacker, good however aimless, and content material to do odd jobs till, effectively, his discontent will get the higher of him. Then again, she has a transparent course in life: from their small city to New Orleans, the place she plans to coach as a chef. (This makes “Charlie Harper” the second romance this yr, after Netflix’s “Voice Messages for Isabelle,” to pair Robinson with a foodie lover. He’s not a nasty man to have.)
For a time, they dwell collectively within the shabby-chic bliss of Louisiana, however the fault strains are simple to identify: his ambitions develop additional and farther from hers, and his rising alcohol downside makes the state of affairs worse. The movie would have us imagine that Charlie is a genius who wastes his genius, even when the quite tenuous demonstration of the state of affairs lies in the truth that it associates madeleines with Proust; Regardless, the extra time we spend bouncing round their relationship, the extra we sense that the {couples} will not be significantly appropriate of their respective presents, and even much less so of their failures.
“Charlie Harper” is fastidiously constructed: Eldridge and Dean’s course could be agile and imaginative, compensating for shortcomings within the writing (by Dean alone). Sharone Meir’s lens skillfully marks the completely different passages of the couple’s story with clear shifts in palette and texture, from the crimson, saturated lighting of first like to the sharper, brighter readability that accompanies time, age and disappointment. Sam Levy’s enhancing additionally oscillates associatively between these moods, seemingly letting sensory reminiscence form the timeline of the proceedings. However that may seem to be a number of formal enterprise for such a light-hearted story. As viewers navigate the movie’s loops and reversals, they might really feel — very similar to troubled lovers engaged on their relationship — that they are placing extra into this factor than they’re getting out of it.