Three words: Me. Before. You.
Remember Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games movies? He's not actually dead. After falling into a pit of man-eating mutts in Mockingjay Part 2, he came back to life as a terribly unhappy disabled British man in the new and beautifully tear-jerking trailer for the film, Me Before You.
If you're weak-hearted, definitely grab some tissues before hitting play on the video below.
The powerful story of Louisa and Will comes from a heart-breakingly wonderful book by Jojo Moyes (2012), also titled Me Before You. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you do so. Moyes captivates and conquers the love story between Louisa and Will and I can't wait to see it captured on film.
I'm excited about Me Before You because it's something that we don't normally see in a popular, mainstream love story. I don't want to give too much away, but it is definitely more than an average fairy tale between two people fated to meet and change each other.
We have Louisa, who is desperate to find some kind of work after losing her long-time job at a cafe. She lands a job as a caregiver for Will, a paraplegic man, and everything in her life changes. Will is hesitant and resistant to her charming and quirky personality (as you could see represented in her clothing choices and her sweet story about her bumble bee tights) and she becomes desperate to break down his walls. But I think Will may be even more desperate to find someone to make him feel alive. Will feels as though he has lost every essence of his being through his detrimental injury, but he can't help becoming intrigued in Louisa's life. Their meeting spirals into a friendship that sends them on a journey to figure how their relationship is going to work. They don't know if they can exist together or if their differences will tear them apart. There's an electrifying presence of guilt that coincides with desire that will keep you going until the very end. Will Trainer's life will make you question what makes life worth living and if it is worth living at all.
Starring Emilia Clarke as Louisa and Sam Claflin as Will, Me Before You looks like an extremely promising film adaption of Moyes's novel. Finnick is alive and getting the screen time he deserves and I think Emilia is charming and radiant as Louisa. I don't see a lot of room for error between the two. Let's just pray that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and New Line Cinema produce it so that it captures the essence of Moyes's characters and shapes the story into the captivating film it deserves to be.
