Review of How I Live Now (2013) by Peter C — 05 Oct 2013

Not for the first time, I precursor a review with the following warning: I am not the target audience. Wrong age, gender and sensibility. That said, How I Live Now was not completely wasted on me.

Daisy, played by Saoirse Ronan, the impressive American actress who seems to be the go-to-girl to portray strong young women and teenage angst, arrives in rural England from the metropolis of the States to stay with her liberal-minded aunt and carefree cousins.

The latter splash about in rivers, climb trees and run amok in fields and forests. The former locks herself in her room (once lived in by her deceased mother, whose loss is a void she intensely feels and struggles to fill), wrestles with insecurity and repeats self-help mantras about taking risks and being brave.

Then in steps Edmund, her attractive, brooding, eldest cousin, with whom she falls head over heels in love with. They gaze, they touch fingertips, they whip their knickers off. Quicker than you can say "wait a cotton-vested, cousin-picking minute".

Alas, the twittering sparrows and golden sunsets of their blossoming love is cut short by the onset of nuclear war (drat) which has been rampaging through mainland Europe (double drat) and now hit London with the loss of tens of thousands of lives (triple drat).

From here on in, my being in the wrong target audience irks more than somewhat.

"If the world doesn't end, and I'm not here with you, I don't want to live at all." A wet line delivered by a weepy Daisy to her winsome beau.

Romeo and Juliet are separated by the armed forces. He to a camp for boys and young men, she to a home for evacuees. But not before they hand-on-their-hearts promise to do whatever it takes to reunite at the special place where she touched him in his special place.

What follows is three quarters of an hour of Daisy running around the war torn countryside. Up hills, down hills. Into forests, out of forests. Dodging bullets, firing bullets. You. Get. The. Drift.

Will she find him? Did he survive? And will they gaze, touch fingertips and get their knickers off once more?

To tell is to spoil. To watch is to endure. And to write is to bring closure on a so-so film that was oh-so slow and not for the likes of this ageing homo.

Note: ageing, not raging.

3/5.