Five Feet Apart

By: Ashlee Dell

The next young adult romantic drama, Five Feet Apart, is here and you likely will not be able to get through the film without shedding a tear or two—more or less if you have seen your share of hospitals or a genetic illness yourself. The twist here; however, is that it’s a chronic illness film with deadly consequences at the forefront of this love story.

Five Feet Apart centers on Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), a teenager battling Cystic Fibrosis since childhood who has just returned to the hospital for another stay while she optimistically waits for a new set of lungs. She is obsessed with organization and following her treatment regimen with her pills in color-coded rows and an equally organized to-do list. She’s also a YouTuber who posts vlogs about living with CF. Stella meets fellow CF patient Will (Cole Sprouse) who is undergoing a clinical trial for Cystic Fibrosis patients that have contracted the harmful bacteria B. cepacia.

Will is immediately drawn to Stella, but as with CF patients, they will become even sicker if they are in close proximity of each other or less than six feet to be exact. The “six foot rule” referenced in the film refers to the guideline from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in order to lower to risk of cross-infection of other “CF-ers,” as the affected cast refers to themselves as. You may the wonder why the film is titled Five Feet Apart, but it will still make your head spin after discovering the reason. Will is a cynic who has no interest in following the same strict regimen as Stella, or even living half the time, which angers Stella and makes her take Will under her wing. Will agrees to following his treatment schedule in exchange for drawing a portrait of Stella. With Will’s bacterial infection; however, it becomes even more dangerous for Stella to be around him because if she were to catch bacteria B. cepacia she would no longer qualify for a long-awaited lung transplant.

Throughout the film Stella battles with her own inner demons while selling the love story of falling for a boy she cannot even touch. After many FaceTime sessions, Stella and Will eventually go on a date and even bring a six-foot-long pool stick that they carry through the hospital. Stella’s best friend Poe (Moisés Arias) plays wingman and helps the two of them continue to sneak around, well against the wishes of the Nurse Barb (Kimberly Herbert Gregory). In the span of just a few weeks Stella and Will fall in love and go to very dangerous lengths to be closer with Stella teaching Will to want to live and Will teaching Stella to live her life while she has it. With a series of cliches and tropes, the film culminates with a tragic climax that gives some serious Titanic energy, but still lends exceptionally well to the film’s target demographic.

Had John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars never been made, Five Feet Apart would have come off as less of a cliche. They literally even feature one of the same songs from Green’s film, M83’s “Wait,” during one of the more tearful moments towards the end of Five Feet Apart. However, more films that shed light on other chronic illnesses not as well-represented as cancer also deserve representation, so we’ll give it a pass.

Haley Lu Richardson shines in a breakout leading role after her performance in The Edge of Seventeen. Richardson’s role was one that carried a lot of weight in representing the “CF-er” that the film is based on. Cole Sprouse also shined in his first lead romance film and, of course, likely helped the film’s anticipation due to his role on the hit series “Riverdale”. Additionally, the film could not have been complete without Moisés Arias as Poe who played the central comedic relief of the movie in the wake of all of the tragedy.

Five Feet Apart is also Justin Baldoni’s (“Jane the Virgin”) directorial debut and a film he had a personal connection to after losing his late friend, Claire Wineland, to CF. The making of film had medical advice from doctors while on set to ensure CF was represented as accurately as possible on screen. The slate on the screen at the beginning of the film’s early screening even linked to a well-thought partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in hopes of raising funds to find a cure. Baldoni’s direction paired with the screenplay by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis is successful in shedding light on an underfunded chronic and life-threatening genetic illness. Finally, as you can probably guess, Stella and Will don’t always stay six feet apart—romantic or irresponsible, you be the judge.