Touching from a distance

MOVING HOSPITAL DRAMA WILL

WHEN this powerful teen drama pops up on download, you’ll probably find it under “Romance”. Perhaps it’s time to invent a new genre. Like The Fault In Our Stars, Everything, Everything and Midnight Sun, this is a tearjerking romance about an attractive young couple kept apart by an ugly disease.

If this is your favourite type of movie (ill teen romance?), you probably need to have a word with yourself.

While this film about two star-crossed lovers with cystic fibrosis (CF) ruthlessly plays with our emotions, it definitely does its job.

It’s touching, nicely cast, smartly shot and raises awareness without feeling preachy.

Weirdly, a home streaming service will be where the 10,400 – mostly young – Brits who suffer from this incurable condition will watch this film.

As it deftly explains, CF is a life-shortening disease which causes thick mucus to build up in the organs.

Sufferers are prone to respiratory infections so, for them, sitting in air-conditioned cinema alongside others with the disease poses a major risk of cross-infection.

This confusingly titled romance is set in an American hospital ward where sufferers are told to stay six feet apart from each other (this being the distance a cough can travel).

Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) is in there for what she calls a “tune-up” and it’s obvious this is something which regularly happens.

She is on first-name terms with nurse Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory), her room is decorated like a regular teenage bedroom and her best friend Poe (Moisés Arias) is a fellow longtime patient.

To avoid cross-infection, their friendship is mostly conducted via video messaging. Nobody can blame these kids for being attached to their smartphones.

And Stella is one teenager with a valid reason to document her life on an internet blog. Tragically aware that time is short, she is determined not to waste a day.

Included on her to-do list is a commitment to raise awareness of the disease. Richardson is playing a teen movie archetype – the selfcontrolled goody-two-shoes.

But here we really understand where it is coming from. It’s a familiar character, played with real depth.

Will (Cole Sprouse), a newcomer to the hospital, is another one – the brooding, rebellious loner.

He is undergoing a drug trial but seems to have little hope of success.

To Stella’s horror, he wanders around the hospital without a face mask and keeps forgetting to take his medication.

They have got nothing in common, so are destined to fall head-over-heels in love.

The may little plot be a pre-