Photograph: Enda Bowe/BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu
Adapted from Sally Rooney’s novel, I was anxious that the screen adaptation could not do justice to her honest and intimate style of writing. If you have read Sally Rooney’s novel you will know that this book is built solely on the bond between the two main characters; it’s unusual lack of plot has brought recognition in its ability to portray the complexities of modern relationships. It follows the ebbs and flows of their relationship with all its natural bumps containing no real climax. Naturally, then, as internal perspectives are an area which screen is so often lacking, I thought how could it possibly do it justice? Rooney’s novel would be just another click bait opportunity, capitalising on the popularity of the book but translating poorly on screen. A tamer Fifty Shades of Grey.
However, this piece is genius, regardless of whether you are watching afresh or as a fan of the book. It maintains all the intensity of the novel, mostly through silence, lighting and cinematography. I found myself holding my breath along with the characters in the scenes, an element rarely preserved when adapting from novels. In fact, the series makes apparent the void in teen/young adult screen, by contrasting the over-dramatised and belittled teen emotions often written by a detached fifty year old man behind a desk. The script unlike the far fetched land of Skins or Misfits, is placed in mundane ordinary experiences. It is a dramatisation of isolation, manifested in class structures, miscommunication and loss. Communication forms a heavy theme in the script as two elite communicators in the written form, struggle to put across their most basic desires verbally. When Jessa Crispin at The Guardian wrote ‘I was bored watching these very typical representations of college students doing very normal things ‘, I think she was forgetting the title of the book. This isn’t supposed to be a happening programme, it is revolutionary because it is an exact mirror of the young experience now but perhaps she has forgotten what it is like to be 20.
9/10
A Thespian's View 