Five Feet Apart

Justin Baldoni’s 2019 film builds its tension out of a clinical measurement. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation guidance asks people with CF to stay at least six feet, about two metres, apart to cut droplet transmission. The script treats stealing back one of those feet as rebellion; the title is that thirty centimetre theft. Claire Wineland, who lived with cystic fibrosis, told Baldoni about the rule. She consulted on the film, coached Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse on their coughs and helped dress Stella’s hospital room. She died in September 2018, aged twenty one, after a double lung transplant; the film is dedicated to her. The order runs opposite to what most assume: the novel was written from the screenplay. Rachael Lippincott turned Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis’s script into a book published in November 2018, four months before release. The objections came from people with CF. Gunnar Esiason argued the wrong thing was cast as villain: the disease should have been the antagonist, not the contact precautions. Elsie Tellier called for a boycott. Michaela Blosser worried younger viewers would think the rule could be waved off. A good fit if a love story whose turning point is a ruler sounds worth it. Not for anyone wanting the illness itself at the centre; here it narrows to the distance rule alone.