Me Before You

Thea Sharrock’s 2016 film is her feature debut, she came out of the theatre, and the screenplay was written by the novelist herself, Jojo Moyes. The most consequential adaptation decision sits there. The scene in which Lou confesses an assault in her past was filmed, rewritten over roughly six months, then cut altogether, and Will’s sister Georgina was dropped too. That leaves a Lou with no history of her own, so the relationship runs one way: Will enlarges, Lou is enlarged. Readers who valued Lou’s own arc will find the film thinner. The second thing is what the locations do. Pembroke Castle in Wales plays the Traynor home and Mallorca stands in for Mauritius, which keeps the film’s eye permanently touristic. The class gap sits in the frame as handsome decor rather than as a problem, and that distance between the weight of the subject and the lightness of the images will decide the film for you. It cost twenty million dollars and took two hundred and eight million worldwide. Three hundred actors were auditioned for Lou before Emilia Clarke. Not for you if you want the argument weighted evenly. Will’s decision is fixed from the first scene and the only dramatic question is whether Lou can reverse it, which is precisely what disability rights campaigners protested on release.