This is your typical romantic comedy/drama with a little twist to the meet-cute. Writer Jane (Lucy Hale) and photographer Will (Nat Wolffe) decide to hook up at a wedding. Then, at the last minute, Will changes his mind and starts spilling all of his past relationships to Jane and she does the same. This reveals each other’s personalities, quirks, and red flags within a twenty-four hour span.
Still, this is a blog about writing, so I’m going to skip to that part. Spoilers ahead:
It is mentioned throughout that Jane is a freelance journalist working on a piece about murder the in the Hampton’s while also attending the wedding (getting some work done while trying to bang randos in the coat closet, apparently). She expresses within past relationships how freelance work makes her feel independent and keeps her life exciting. However, there is one past relationship which was based very much around her writing career. When Jane was earning her MA, she tracks down one of her favorite authors who happens to be a professor at her college (not her professor, I’d like to point out, so no drama there). Wallace (the professor played by John Gallagher Jr.) expresses how he can’t stand people, leaving his house, and new life experiences. Since he’d stopped drinking, the most he could handle were teaching his classes and doing book signings, then wanting to scurry back to his den. He confesses that he took the teaching job to have more time to write, but instead watching reality TV. Feeling a little called out here.
Still, he embraces a relationship with Jane, asking her to move in after a week. Jane is a little confused by his hermit behavior, feeling that experience is a part of what makes a good writing. She continues to have a social life while he falls back into addictive behavior. She chooses to leave him, realizing that he’s not really willing to work on himself. Wallace dies shortly after, cause of death being implied as something related to his drinking or mental health.
Even though this plot line brings down the mood of the whole film, I appreciate that Jane didn’t see Wallace’s behaviors as some stereotype sign of genius. Hemingway, Joyce, Parker, Fitzgerald, Salinger, I could go on and on. They are viewed as tortured souls who drank because of their brilliance. In reality, they drank because they lived in a time when no one knew how to help them stop.
Don’t worry. The rest of the movie isn’t as heavy as that.
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