All the Bright Places

All the Bright Places (2020) is about two teenagers meeting, and both are found in a place where they were considering killing themselves. Violet lost her sister in a car accident and has not been in a car since. One morning she is standing on the edge of a bridge. Theodore sees her and talks her down. Then they start travelling the state together for a school project. The first half plays like a recovery. Violet speaks again, gets in a car, laughs. Theodore is pretending to recover. That is the real subject. Theodore is not the person everyone sees; he is carrying a bipolar condition, tells nobody, and playing the person who can save someone else suits him. The second half is about that role collapsing. It is adapted from Jennifer Niven's novel and she wrote the screenplay. She wrote the book after the death of someone she had known in her youth. Elle Fanning is also one of the producers. The film treats suicide directly and closes by directing viewers to helplines. Reviews split: some said the subject was romanticised, others that the film specifically avoided that trap. It was released on Netflix. It runs 107 minutes. Good for: teenage drama, films about mental health, and book adaptations. Less good for: suicide is at the centre and it is hard if the subject is close; the first half is too light in tone.