This charming film, starring Douglas Booth and Alison Pill, bridges the gap between Goethe’s novel and the adaptation’s modern New York City setting.
There is a boisterously nimble quality to the way in which Douglas Booth plays the titular character of “Young Werther.”
With hair perpetually coifed, Werther has the look of an uppity trust-fund kid, but Booth plays him more like a dandy mixed with a golden retriever, transported from another era yet born yesterday.
His interpretation bridges a kind of spiritual gap between the 18th-century German novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that the film is based on and the modern New York City milieu that this charming adaptation takes place in. The movie, written and directed by José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço, focuses on the trials of Werther, an idealistic young man caught in a love triangle. After meeting and falling in love with Charlotte (Alison Pill), a woman he spends a whirlwind night with at a party, Werther is stunned to hear that she’s already engaged. Charlotte’s fiancé, Albert (Patrick J. Adams), is stable and sweet, but he doesn’t make time for her. Werther, on the other hand, is a romantic adventure.
He is all jokes and jolly energy, an irresistible foil to Charlotte’s typically constricted outlook. Booth and Pill make for a pair worth rooting for, but it’s Booth in particular, just barely but believably not of this world, who lends the film its winning sensibility.
He’s helped by the film’s warmly pleasing focus, where the edges of the frame blur around the central characters, often Werther and Charlotte laughing and falling for one another. It’s as if we’re looking through a telescope, a representation of both the tunnel vision of love and also of a tragic romance of centuries past.
Young Werther
Rated R for some language and sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
