After (2019)
Directed by Jenny Gage
Tessa Young is a dedicated student, dutiful daughter and loyal girlfriend to her high school sweetheart. Entering her first semester of college, Tessa's guarded world opens up when she meets Hardin Scott, a mysterious and brooding rebel who makes her question all she thought she knew about herself -- and what she wants out of life.
14 connections found
View:
14 films that influenced After
What critics say influenced After
Pride And Prejudice and Wuthering Heights are the two novels that keep coming up during Hardin and Tessa’s courtship, and it’s potentially intriguing to wonder if Hardin and Tessa are in the early days of a romantic comedy or a romantic tragedy.
The two eventually bond over their shared love of fiction books, with Tessa, running away from the prospect of kissing him during a game of Truth or Dare, being shocked to discover a copy of Wuthering Heights in Hardin's bedroom.
For two people who reference Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, they can’t make a compelling love story of their own.
As a fan of “Wuthering Heights” and “Pride and Prejudice,” Tessa can’t resist Hardin’s, umm, charms, which marry the worst aspects of Heathcliff and Mr. Darcy.
He's also able to quote from Wuthering Heights and engage in a spirited classroom argument with Tessa, about Pride and Prejudice , in which the subtext is inescapable.
The opposites attract spark between Tessa Young (Josephine Langford, sister of Katherine) and Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, nephew of Ralph and Joseph) also calls to mind generational touchstones like Rory and Jess on Gilmore Girls , Betty and Jughead on Riverdale , or even Jim Stark and Judy way back in Rebel Without A Cause.
Pride And Prejudice and Wuthering Heights are the two novels that keep coming up during Hardin and Tessa’s courtship, and it’s potentially intriguing to wonder if Hardin and Tessa are in the early days of a romantic comedy or a romantic tragedy.
It turns out Hardin is in Tessa’s literature class, dressed in Punk rock shirts and showing off his erudition by slamming any feminist labeling of “Pride and Prejudice.”
They later get into a debate about Pride and Prejudice , in which their bickering is supposed to remind us of the famous couple from that novel.
For two people who reference Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, they can’t make a compelling love story of their own.
Hardin thinks that Elizabeth Bennet, the demandingly ardent heroine of “Pride and Prejudice,” “needs to chill.”
Will he turn out to be a seductive psycho like Mark Wahlberg in “Fear”?
Advertisement
An appealing Josephine Langford ( Wish Upon , Wolf Creek ) plays the central role of Tessa, a fresh-faced teen who at the story's beginning is starting her first year at college.
Josephine Langford of “Wolf Creek” and “Wish Upon” is Tessa, whom we meet as she’s delivered to Atlanta’s Rossmore University by her helicopter divorced mom (Selma Blair) and still-in-high-school beau Noah (Dylan Arnold).
But it is fluff, especially when compared to the great run of story-strong teen films we’ve had this decade, including Eighth Grade, Lady Bird, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, The Duff, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Diary of a Teenage Girl and The Spectacular Now (to name a few).
He She’s All That -ed her!
But long gone are the wicked romps from the 1990s like “Wild Things” or “Cruel Intentions,” now everyone sends threats via text and sex itself isn’t portrayed as edgy, but as a routine motion.
Advertisement
Instead, After ’s “troubled bad boy meets earnest good girl” story feels like the latest riff on the dynamics that fueled Twilight and Fifty Shades Of Grey , the latter of which started as fan fiction of the former.
Never does it dare get as risqué as “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a pity, but it’s also not necessarily a bore either.
Compared to other fanfiction-turned-film like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, Susan Martin’s adaptation of Anna Todd’s novel of the same name is more in line with Riverdale or The CW teenage phenomena of glossy, fantastical scenarios.
Like Fifty Shades of Grey and The Mortal Instruments before it, After started off as fanfiction.
We’re then taken on a lovely trip down memory lane as we relive a milk tossed version of the questionable romances of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey .
Like fellow sex fiction-work Fifty Shades of Grey , though here the writing has been approached with the hazard lights permanently on, After is an adaptation of an inexplicably popular novel series.
Based on Anna Todd’s best-selling novel and an abundance of YA melodrama (see: Five Feet Apart), the days of She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You and/or A Walk to Remember seem like long ago days.