Everything, Everything

Everything, Everything (2017) is about a girl who has never left her house because of an immune deficiency. Maddy is eighteen. The air in the house is filtered, everything that comes in is disinfected, and only her mother and her nurse enter. Her mother is a doctor and set the whole arrangement up. A boy called Olly moves in next door. They look at each other through the windows, then write notes, then text. Maddy decides to go outside. The decision becomes an escape story, and then the film's real information emerges. The best formal choice is how it visualises the texting. Instead of bubbles on screen, the two talk face to face in a space diner Maddy has built as a model, or in a library; the conversation becomes a place. It is adapted from Nicola Yoon's novel. Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson star. Stella Meghie directed. The explanation in the final section caused argument. Some viewers with chronic illness found it uncomfortable that the illness is constructed as a trap; the narrative was read as invalidating the stories of characters who really are ill. The design is very clean and white; the sterility of the house is in the framing too. It did well commercially. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: teenage romance, book adaptations, and undemanding viewing. Less good for: the move in the final section is contested and the characters are thin.