"Like Crazy" directed by Drake Doremus, may just be the new romance of the century. Anna and Jacob's love story rivals that of Bella and Edward, so watch out "Twilight:" there's a new complicated relationship in town and it doesn't involve a bloody mess.
The character, Anna, played by Felicity Jones, has a more complex love problem than being human and dating a vampire: she is a British student who falls in love with an American boy, but is forced to live away from him when her visa expires. Being able to love someone on the screen may be easy to fake with the skills of a good actress, but there has to be some kind of chemistry off the set in order to make the audience believe it. Costar Anton Yelchin plays Jacob, the man for it in the unfortunate love story.
One would think that with great chemistry off set comes great chemistry on set, but both Jones and Yelchin believe they got along well enough to make the chemistry seem so natural.
"The main thing was just to try to make [the characters] feel as real as possible," Jones said. "And that was through a different kind of performance where you have to reduce everything. So the main thing was to make it naturalistic."
Director and writer Drake Doremus is responsible for this realistic love affair. When writing the story, Doremus said he did not want it to be like another cliché fairy tale because that is not what real love is about. His goal was to try and make it as realistic as possible.
"Love is gray and relationships are gray and long distance relationships especially are difficult to sustain and stay connected with somebody," Doremus said. "And just because you're not fully with somebody it doesn't mean you're not sort of half with that person. This film ultimately covers what it feels like to try to fight to get over somebody and to sort of not be able to."
Doremus said he wants to change the genre of romance in the film industry.
"I want to make personal films," he said. "I want to put my feelings and emotions about relationships into the films."
Jazzmyne Morrison can be reached at jazzmyne.morrison@student.shu.edu.
