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Take a breath. Take a deep breath. Those of us who have the luxury of taking breathing for granted get to choose when we think about drawing air into our lungs—to center our thoughts, to relax, to sing, to blow up a balloon, to run. For people with lung diseases like cystic fibrosis (CF), every breath is a struggle, a triumph, and a painful reminder that it may be the last. 

Just a few decades ago, the life expectancy for those born with CF was 10. So it is only recently that people like the teenagers with CF in “Five Feet Apart” lived long enough to truly understand their disease and their limitations. 

Stella (a radiant Haley Lu Richardson ) checks into the hospital for help with an infection as though it is her second home. The medical staff are all old friends, especially Barb ( Kimberly Hebert Gregory ), a compassionate nurse. Stella knows all the routines and she knows what to bring for comfort, including her stuffed panda, the laptop she uses for her vlog updates about living with CF, and the pictures from her bedroom wall.

Stella knows that her best case scenario, a lung transplant, may only work for five years, but in the CF medical relay race, the best case scenario is always just to last long enough for better treatment to be invented.

In the meantime, Stella knows that her best coping mechanisms are feeling in control of her “regimen” of care, organizing the meds cart, taking her pills with chocolate pudding, and visiting the babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Her best friend Poe ( Moises Arias ) is back in the hospital, too. And so is Will ( Cole Sprouse ) another teenage CF patient, there to receive an experimental drug. While Stella is ultra, even hyper-cooperative in her treatment, hoping to be able to get the lung transplant, Will is a cynic and a rebel, in part because his prognosis is not as hopeful. Even if the medication is successful, the B-cepacia infection has made him ineligible for a transplant. Stella presses him to keep up with his regimen, and he agrees if she will let him draw her.

Love stories always have to have a reason to keep the couple apart and in this case, that means literally apart. Because of their vulnerability to infection, CF patients have to stay at least six feet from each other. They are like Romeo and Juliet if the Montagues were bacteria and the Capulets were a set of new lungs.

Latex gloves, no touching, and six feet between them at all times. As Stella falls for Will she says, “After all CF has taken from me, I don’t mind stealing one foot back.” And so they have a date, still within the walls of the hospital (apparently hospitals have swimming pools) using a five-foot pool cue to measure their distance. And then, because they are teenagers, they take some very big risks.

It is tempting to dismiss this story as “sick-lit” but director Justin Baldoni balances the compelling specifics of CF with the larger questions we all face about creating meaning in a world of uncertainty and loss. And he does it with two gifted and appealing young stars, especially Richardson, whose exquisitely expressive face shows us every hope, fear, hesitation, regret, and longing Stella is feeling. 

Baldoni clearly learned a great deal from his “My Last Days” television series documenting the lives of terminally ill people, including a teenager with CF, and he shows sensitivity and insight in exploring these issues within a fictional story. He makes the most of the way he uses the hospital setting, the atrium lobby with its drab, sturdy institutional furniture. As Stella and Will fall in love, it seems warmed by their tenderness and excitement.

Even healthy young people can die. Illness can devastate families, emotionally and financially. It is scary to love someone and it can be even scarier to let someone love you, especially when you are embarrassed by your scars. We all try to find a way to feel in control of something, whether it is by lining up pill boxes on a meds cart and doing what we are told or by putting an “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” sign on a hospital door and ignoring good advice. “We don’t have time for delicacy,” one character says, in their case because they may not live a “normal” lifespan, but in reality, films like this remind us we could all do better at making sure we get the most from the time we have.   

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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Film credits.

Five Feet Apart (2019)

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, language and suggestive material.

116 minutes

Cole Sprouse as Will

Haley Lu Richardson as Stella

Moisés Arias as Poe

Kimberly Hebert Gregory as Nurse Barb

Parminder Nagra as Dr. Noor Hamid

Claire Forlani as Meredith

• Justin Baldoni
• Mikki Daughtry
• Tobias Iaconis

Cinematographer

• Frank G. DeMarco
• Angela M. Catanzaro
• Brian Tyler
• Breton Vivian

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‘Five Feet Apart’ Review: Ailing Teenagers Live Dangerously for Love

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By Ben Kenigsberg

• March 14, 2019

In “Five Feet Apart,” Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) is a teenager with cystic fibrosis. Will (Cole Sprouse), a newcomer to the hospital where she resides, also has the disease and is undergoing a drug trial for an antibiotic-resistant infection . They don’t mesh, at first. She is obsessive-compulsive and effusive; she dutifully takes her meds and keeps a YouTube diary about her life. He is a brooding artist and rule-breaker convinced that they are breathing borrowed air.

Because of the risk of cross-infection , they must stay six feet apart. Five feet, as measured by the pool cue they carry between them, will be their eventual concession to love and living dangerously.

Promoted by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation as an awareness tool , “Five Feet Apart” is better made than a synopsis suggests. To maintain the illusion of intimacy, the director, Justin Baldoni, plays tricks with focal lengths, often framing Richardson and Sprouse so that they appear close together before cutting to a wide shot that shows them far apart. Richardson, previously wonderful with good material ( “Columbus,” “Support the Girls” ), here cements her genius status by finding depths beyond the contrived screenplay.

The cast’s schlock redemption efforts only go so far in a story that stacks the deck with a tragedy in Stella’s family and a series of increasingly implausible rendezvous between Stella and Will. You can set your watch to what happens to Stella’s best friend (Moises Arias), also a patient, and the last act is a supernova of shamelessness. But even then, this weepie is tough to resist entirely.

Rated PG-13 for flagrant violations of doctor’s orders. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.

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Five feet apart, common sense media reviewers.

Strong acting saves predictable, sentimental love story.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Don't take life for granted. Grab love and joy whe

Although cystic fibrosis community is split on som

A young man looks like he's perched precariously o

Lots of yearning looks and one scene in which Stel

Occasional use of strong language, including one "

The AfflowVest, a branded mobile mechanical oscill

Parents need to know that Five Feet Apart is based on the best-selling YA novel about Will (Cole Sprouse) and Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), two hospitalized 17-year-olds with cystic fibrosis (CF) who fall in love. Since the guideline for CF patients is that they should stay a minimum of six feet apart from…

Positive Messages

Don't take life for granted. Grab love and joy wherever you can find them, and treasure those closest to you, because you don't know when death will come calling. Strong element of "if you love someone, set them free." Themes also include perseverance, empathy.

Positive Role Models

Although cystic fibrosis community is split on some aspects of movie, there's agreement that this is one of the few movies to even attempt to represent what it's like for teens living with CF (or something other than cancer). Stella, who also has OCD, is diligent about her treatment schedule, craves order. She's caring, loving to her parents and close friends. Will is edgier and has less discipline, but he's artistic and loving and wants to live each day to its fullest. Poe is a caring, selfless friend. The nurses are patient, dedicated, empathetic.

Violence & Scariness

A young man looks like he's perched precariously on a hospital roof and might fall. (Potential spoiler alerts ahead.) A young character who dies of cystic fibrosis is briefly shown coding, then dead on the floor. A character who looks to have died is saved via CPR. Sad conversations about loved ones who've died (and how they died).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Lots of yearning looks and one scene in which Stella touches her chest sensually in front of Will after they both declare they could touch each other. They also undress down to their underwear and jump into the hospital pool together but don't touch purposely. They hold gloved hands. A couple of cases of asexual accidental touches, both in times of stress or emergency.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional use of strong language, including one "f---ing," plus "bitch" and a couple uses of "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "hell," "goddamn," "boobs," "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The AfflowVest, a branded mobile mechanical oscillation therapy device used by CF and other chronically ill pulmonary patients, is prominently featured.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Five Feet Apart is based on the best-selling YA novel about Will ( Cole Sprouse ) and Stella ( Haley Lu Richardson ), two hospitalized 17-year-olds with cystic fibrosis (CF) who fall in love. Since the guideline for CF patients is that they should stay a minimum of six feet apart from each other due to the danger of cross-infection, the title refers to the one foot the pair "take back" to be a tiny bit closer as their love story develops. Language isn't frequent but includes a use of "f---ing," plus "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," etc., and a few references to sex (or lack thereof). Will and Stella aren't supposed to touch, much less kiss (saliva exchange would be deadly, as one of them has a serious bacterial infection), so there's no sex, although they do undress down to their underwear in one romantic scene. The movie, which had a CF consultant, has been divisive within the CF community; some members are happy to see more awareness for the disease, which affects about 30,000 in the U.S., and others worry that the movie romanticizes the illness or misleads able-bodied audiences. Ultimately, the story promotes treasuring those closest to you and has themes of perseverance and empathy. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (34)
• Kids say (173)

Based on 34 parent reviews

Expert review is missing a lot of details about sex.

Parents be warned, sex is the major talking point of this movie., what's the story.

FIVE FEET APART is one of a growing number of YA book-to-screen adaptations about teens who fall in love under life-and-death circumstances. Stella ( Haley Lu Richardson ) is a kind, rule-following 17-year-old cystic fibrosis (CF) patient who's back in the hospital for a "tune up" when she meets rule- breaking 17-year-old Will ( Cole Sprouse ), who also has CF and is in the hospital. CF patients are supposed to stay at least six feet apart from one another to avoid contagious infections that could worsen their already precarious condition. Stella is patiently awaiting a lung transplant, while Will, who's tested positive for a dangerous bacteria called B. cepacia , can barely remember to take his meds. The two begin a tentative friendship and flirtation that eventually (and predictably) leads to romance. Stella helps Will be more disciplined with his treatments, and he helps her learn to seize the day. But the seemingly insurmountable question remains: Can two people who can't touch really be together?

Is It Any Good?

This love story requires some suspension of disbelief, but its charming stars and and tear-jerking romance will appeal to fans of The Fault in Our Stars . That doesn't mean audiences should expect as much heartbreak as in FiOS , but the "dying teenagers sharing an intense first love" is definitely a theme of Five Feet Apart , too. Richardson in particular is very talented, and she and Sprouse have just enough spark to make it work, although Stella and Will's romance isn't as swoon-worthy as Hazel Grace and Gus' or as adventurous as Maddy and Olly's . After all, Stella and Will can not, must not touch, so their relationship is limited to conversations and endless longing looks. For some inexplicable reason, their parents are rarely on the hospital floor (in sharp contrast to similar films in which parents sit vigil day after day), and the teens interact mostly with kind, maternal Nurse Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory). And Moises Arias stands out as Poe, Stella's hospital bestie and fellow CF patient. Poe supports the idea of Stella, who apparently also has OCD, "dating" Will, even though it puts her at great risk of losing her transplant eligibility.

Because the movie is almost wholly set in the hospital, the plot sometimes feels slow and predictable, and the teens' level of access to all parts of the facility seem far-fetched, considering that such a large hospital would definitely have more attentive security. And the fact that the teens somehow throw a Pinterest-level dinner party is flat-out unbelievable (even with the reason provided). Still, the story will undeniably tug at viewers' heartstrings, and given Sprouse's popularity (thanks to Riverdale ), there's surely an eager fan base ready to see him fall in love, no matter how sad the circumstances.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Five Feet Apart teaches viewers about cystic fibrosis. Do you know more about the illness than you did before you saw the movie?

The movie has been somewhat controversial within the CF community, even though there was a CF consultant on the film. Do you think movies need to represent every aspect of an illness or disability accurately? Is there value in creating awareness even if a portrayal isn't 100% realistic?

Which characters are role models ? Why? How does the story show the importance of empathy and perseverance ?

If you've read the book, how does the movie compare? Which do you like better? Why?

Why do you think people like stories about sick teens so much?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 15, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : June 11, 2019
• Cast : Haley Lu Richardson , Cole Sprouse , Claire Forlani
• Director : Justin Baldoni
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Romance
• Topics : Book Characters , Friendship
• Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 116 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements, language and suggestive material
• Last updated : March 7, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Five Feet Apart Reviews

But that ending. It doesn’t quite kill the good that comes before it, but it comes mighty close.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 20, 2022

Five Feet Apart suffers from the same clichés as most of the decade’s YA romantic dramas while having to stomach the manipulation of trivializing an illness that can be terminal.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 18, 2022

Five Feet Apart uses illness as a plot device to heighten emotions rather than simply allowing compelling characters to tell their own stories.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 26, 2021

No one in the project can overcome the sick-flick genre's cliches...

Full Review | Jul 22, 2021

Although I appreciate the authenticity the movie wishes to shove down my throat, I wish it gave me something to take away, a moment to save in the filmic moments that reel away in my mind.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 7, 2021

This young-adult tear-jerker is bogged down by cliche and a lack of vision, buoyed only by a fresh performance from lead actress Haley Lu Richardson and an honest conversation about the loneliness of disease.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 28, 2021

The predictability of its plot and sweet but adolescent love story may infect the older audience members with chronic eye roll syndrome.

Full Review | Jan 28, 2021

There's a sincerity here that undoes many of its excesses, thanks largely to the grounded chemistry of its leads.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 10, 2020

The film never really delivers unless you're under 13 years old due to the tone of artificiality overlaying the entire story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Nov 14, 2020

I blame the writing for this colossal miscalculation, but I'll forever associate one of the most gifted young actors working today with this schmaltzy nonsense; she and the other actors raise the material to a degree, but that's about as good as it gets.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 21, 2020

Commendably highlights the issues of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers, you'll learn a thing or two about this illness as well as be sappily charmed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 13, 2020

I hated this movie.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

It wasn't an enjoyable watch.

Ask any high school teacher - or, for that matter, any high schooler - and they'll tell you the surest way to get two teenagers to fall in love is to tell them they can't see each other.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2019

There's a million books like this and a million movies like this, where people are beautiful -- but they're sick!

Full Review | Sep 23, 2019

Despite its best efforts including those from Haley Lu Richardson with a brilliant performance, the film inevitably begins to sink. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Sep 16, 2019

Ultimately, Five Feet Apart was peak emotional manipulation...but, like, it worked.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2019

If a little too much of the dialogue sounds like a teenage inspirational instagram post, then at least the film knows its target audience

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 19, 2019

There are parts that are very Hallmark movie and schmaltzy. And yet you do end up being swept along with the emotions in it because the acting is so note-perfect.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2019

If you're expecting anything remotely deep or intelligent, you best stay clear as this sick-lit, doomed romancer delights in the bittersweet to the point of overindulgence

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 1, 2019

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Five Feet Apart review – sickly teen romance mopes to morbid conclusion

A pair of lovestruck hospital patients trade love letters and latex gloves in cinema’s latest exercise in mawkishness

I t’s been nearly 50 years since Love Story showed that people will pay good money to watch pretty youngsters dying slowly , and five since The Fault in Our Stars revived this morbid subgenre with notable commercial success. Justin Baldoni’s middling derivative courts viewer sympathies with a somewhat novel conceit, taking place almost exclusively within the hospital where perky vlogger and cystic fibrosis patient Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) has been confined as part of a drug trial. Dragging her oxygen line around intensive care, she crosses paths with a fellow trialist, floppy-haired hunk Will (Cole Sprouse), and a wicked new twist is added to an old meet-cute: they can’t get too close, lest they exchange potentially lethal lungfuls of bacteria. Here are two kids who could kill with a kiss.

It’s a weird hook, granted, dependent on the leads hawking up more phlegm than has ever been set before us in the course of an aspirant date movie. Putting the onus on characters who’ve been prescribed bedrest leaves these two hours a touch shuffling dramatically: you sense Baldoni killing a lot of time before he can send on the Reaper for his contracted cameo. Regular musical montages find someone or other moping in the cafeteria while something like the Fray tinkles on the soundtrack; Stella schools her devil-may-care beau via YouTube in the correct application of latex gloves. Love letters are secreted in balloons Will has to pop, filling the hospital corridors with alarming bangs. (The issue of who’s paying for this extended sleepover is, of course, never addressed.)

Trading shamelessly on any weakness for medical soap, Baldoni returns the lamentably underemployed Parminder Nagra to the doctor’s scrubs she once wore on ER, while allowing Richardson – whose smart choices were better showcased in Columbus – to lend certain moments an apple-cheeked vivacity. Yet she surely realises, as Fault’s Shailene Woodley did before her, that this is the kind of marshmallow martyrdom that has to be briskly worked through before they let you at the grownup scripts. The airlessness of the single setting – a controlled environment allowing teens to approach mortality from safe distance – is only dispelled late on, with some daffily fateful business atop a frozen lake: in this case, love means pushing your luck.

The headline of this piece was changed on 25 March 2019.

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Five Feet Apart Is the Logical, Heightened Conclusion of the Sick Lit Genre

There’s no expiration date on teens imagining their own deaths in high dramatic fashion, but it’s hard not to feel as if the contemporary “sick lit” phase has run its course. The Fault in Our Stars came out nearly five years ago — ancient history to its target demo — and subsequent attempts to hop on the chronic illness bandwagon haven’t managed to come close to that film’s cultural impact. So here, in the year of our lord 2019, comes Five Feet Apart , and if it ends up being a late entry in the trend, it wouldn’t be a bad one to go out on.

Technically, Five Feet Apart can’t really be grouped into the “sick lit” genre, as it was never “lit” to begin with. The film is based on an original script by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis. It tracks the aggressively tragic and impossible romance of Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will (Cole Sprouse), two inpatients with cystic fibrosis residing at a hospital in an indeterminate American locale, who fall in love despite being forbidden to come within six feet of each other. (They bend the rules to make it the titular five, and do their best to get that number down from there.) CF patients can transmit infections between each other that can be fatal, and so even Stella and her long-time best friend Poe (Moisés Arias), despite having rooms down the hall from each other, primarily communicate over FaceTime.

When cynical, hot CF-er Will arrives, he and Stella initially clash — she’s got some advanced OCD tendencies and control issues, and he’s more pessimistic about his life expectancy. (He has literally put a handmade sign that reads, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” on his door.) Stella eventually gets him to take his treatment schedule more seriously, in exchange for Will being allowed to draw her portrait — a time-tested romancing technique. From there, of course, the two fall madly, maddeningly in love, carrying a pool cue between them on “dates” at the hospital, chastely undressing as they stare dewy-eyed at each other across a swimming pool. In the ranks of YA contrivances for why the two romantic leads can’t have sex, this ranks just south of Twilight. In both cases, nothing short of death and destruction is ensured by the hookup.

The story and Stella and Will’s eventual flouting of the distance rule is predictable, and probably wildly irresponsible as a model for real-life patients with cystic fibrosis. Of course “living life to the fullest” is expressed as a counterargument to not contracting a fatal lung infection. Of course their seen-it-all nurse, Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory), just doesn’t understand the power of their love. Of course someone close to them dies in the third act to really drive home just how life-and-death their situation is. Due credit then should be given to Sprouse and particularly Richardson for selling all of these reheated tropes to their full potential. Richardson, all messy hair and oversized granny sweaters and sickly glow, is as good as she always is, balancing her character’s anxiety and romanticism perfectly. The script saddles Stella with a rather sadistic amount of personal tragedy (CF is just the beginning), but she really digs into what that biblical level of sadness would feel like for a teen. Sprouse is more in CW mode, but he knows how to tell a girl she’s beautiful on screen for maximum theater-seat swooning, and it’s a surprisingly sense-making counterpoint to Richardson’s more realist performance.

The film’s finale is a veritable symphony of tragic ironies, so bent on punishing its leads that they can’t even mutually enjoy a first kiss without its serving a utilitarian purpose. And yet, if this is the logical conclusion of the ever-heightened hospital-gown teen romance, then it’s fitting for it to reach such operatic heights. This isn’t a genre about the illnesses that it features as much it is about the everyday feeling of all teenagers that their feelings will literally kill them. It lives in the agony of the space before you’ve even kissed someone, much less touched them — a longed-for hypothetical so mind-blowing that one can hardly imagine life continuing afterwards.

• movie review
• five feet apart
• cole sprouse
• haley lu richardson

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Review: ‘Five Feet Apart’ elevates the sick teen genre with a poignant love story

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The cystic fibrosis-themed romantic drama “Five Feet Apart” feels like a real evolution in the sick teen movie genre, because it’s actually a great movie that just happens to be about sick teens, and it doesn’t condescend or try to cheer up anyone. There are no bucket lists — just an authentic portrait that feels real and lived-in, anchored by a pair of excellent performances by Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse .

The story is a take on “Romeo and Juliet,” featuring a pair of young, doomed, star-crossed lovers carrying on a forbidden romance. Both Stella (Richardson) and Will (Sprouse) have cystic fibrosis, a chronic genetic respiratory disorder with a short life expectancy. Patients with CF have to maintain at least 6 feet of distance from each other to avoid dangerous cross-infection, a unique challenge for a pair of 17-year olds falling in love for the first time.

Director Justin Baldoni directed a short documentary about Claire Wineland, a young woman with cystic fibrosis who documented her life on YouTube, and she served as consultant on “Five Feet Apart” before she died in 2018. While the film is not based on her life, screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis have crafted a screenplay that captures the perspective she expressed online, blending a zest for life with gallows humor and an acceptance of death.

The script is a very Hollywood-ized teen romance , with some over-the-top moments to ramp up the stakes, yet the film remains grounded in the realities of the disease. Most importantly, “Five Feet Apart” has a real voice, and a point of view, and there’s no better actor than the ebullient Richardson to embody the attitude Wineland stood for. Richardson can do just about anything, and her performance in “Five Feet Apart” demonstrates a new depth to her range. She brings a knowing soulfulness to every aspect of Stella’s journey, from her grief and rage, to the way she reluctantly lets herself fall for Will. Sprouse, as well as Moises Arias, who plays her best friend, Poe, another patient, rise to her level. It’s especially satisfying to watch Sprouse transform from a snarky, too-cool-for-school CF patient to a young man who finally has hope and some skin in the game, if not for himself, then for her.

‘Riverdale’ heartthrob Cole Sprouse goes for leading man status in ‘Five Feet Apart’ »

Baldoni, best known as an actor, makes his feature directorial debut with “Five Feet Apart,” and it’s incredibly assured, deeply effective filmmaking. Set entirely in a hospital, he captures the sense of place — the culture, the people, the geography — and it never feels claustrophobic or stifling. Baldoni brings a rhythm to these drab, fluorescent-lit hallways, with pop songs driving the pace.

The 5-feet-apart rule (Stella “steals” a foot back) creates an inherently potent tension on screen, where something as simple as extending a hand might cause the audience to instinctively flinch. A scene at the hospital pool where Will and Stella have their first date is electric with energy, as the young lovers yearn for each other, the length of a pool cue keeping them at an achingly safe distance.

The poignant message of “Five Feet Apart” is never far as these characters attempt to experience all life has to offer while struggling to survive. Will loves to say, “It’s just life, it’ll be over before you know it.” While he delivers it with cynicism, it becomes a mantra that takes on new meaning every time it’s uttered. It’s life, and it will be over before we know it — why waste a second?

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Five Feet Apart’

Rated: PG-13, for thematic elements, language and suggestive material

Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes

Playing: In general release

------------

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‘Five Feet Apart’ review: Actors excel in beautifully authentic take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Movie review.

The cystic-fibrosis romantic drama “Five Feet Apart” feels like a real evolution in the sick-teen movie genre, because it’s actually a great movie that just happens to be about sick teens, and it doesn’t condescend to or try to cheer up anyone. There are no bucket lists — just an authentic portrait that feels real and lived-in, anchored by a pair of excellent performances by Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse.

The story is a take on “Romeo and Juliet,” featuring a pair of young, doomed, star-crossed lovers carrying on a forbidden romance. Both Stella (Richardson) and Will (Sprouse) have cystic fibrosis, a chronic genetic respiratory disorder with a short life expectancy. Patients with CF have to maintain at least 6 feet of distance from each other to avoid dangerous cross-infection, a unique challenge for a pair of 17-year-olds falling in love for the first time.

Director Justin Baldoni directed a short documentary about Claire Wineland, a young woman with cystic fibrosis who documented her life on YouTube, and she served as consultant on “Five Feet Apart.” While the film is not based on her life, screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis have crafted a screenplay that captures the perspective she expressed online, blending a zest for life with gallows humor and an acceptance of death.

The script is a very Hollywood-ized teen romance, with some over-the-top moments to ramp up the stakes, yet the film remains grounded in the realities of the disease. Most importantly, “Five Feet Apart” has a real voice, and a point of view, and there’s no better actor than the ebullient Richardson to embody the attitude Wineland stood for. Richardson can do just about anything, and her performance in “Five Feet Apart” demonstrates a new depth to her range. She brings a knowing soulfulness to every aspect of Stella’s journey, from her grief and rage, to the way she reluctantly lets herself fall for Will. Sprouse, as well as Moises Arias, who plays her best friend, Poe, another patient, rise to her level. It’s especially satisfying to watch Sprouse transform from a snarky, too-cool-for-school CF patient to a young man who finally has hope and some skin in the game, if not for himself, then for her.

Baldoni, best known as an actor, makes his feature directorial debut with “Five Feet Apart,” and it’s incredibly assured, deeply effective filmmaking. Set entirely in a hospital, he captures the sense of place — the culture, the people, the geography — of the environment, and it never feels claustrophobic or stifling. Baldoni brings a rhythm to these drab, fluorescent-lit hallways, with pop songs driving the pace.

The 5-feet-apart rule (Stella “steals” a foot back) creates an inherently potent tension on screen, where something as simple as extending a hand might cause the audience to instinctively flinch. A scene at the hospital pool where Will and Stella have their first date is electric with energy, as the young lovers yearn for each other, the length of a pool cue keeping them at an achingly safe distance.

The poignant message of “Five Feet Apart” is never far as these characters attempt to experience all life has to offer while struggling to survive. Will loves to say, “It’s just life, it’ll be over before you know it.” While he delivers it with cynicism, it becomes a mantra that takes on new meaning every time it’s uttered. It’s life, and it will be over before we know it — why waste a second?

★★★  “Five Feet Apart,” with Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Claire Forlani. Directed by Justin Baldoni, from a screenplay by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis. 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, language and suggestive material. Opens March 15 at multiple theaters.

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Metacritic reviews

Five feet apart.

• 90 Los Angeles Times Katie Walsh Los Angeles Times Katie Walsh The cystic fibrosis-themed romantic drama Five Feet Apart feels like a real evolution in the sick teen movie genre, because it’s actually a great movie that just happens to be about sick teens, and it doesn’t condescend or try to cheer up anyone.
• 63 Philadelphia Daily News Gary Thompson Philadelphia Daily News Gary Thompson The movie is actually not bad, until it goes full Lifetime Channel crazy in the third act.
• 60 Variety Andrew Barker Variety Andrew Barker Fresh off of memorable supporting parts in “The Edge of Seventeen” and “Support the Girls,” Richardson gives a star turn every bit as charismatic and assured as the film is formulaic and forgettable, bringing soul, style and nuance to a character that could have easily been a condescending caricature.
• 60 The New York Times Ben Kenigsberg The New York Times Ben Kenigsberg Richardson, previously wonderful with good material (“Columbus,” “Support the Girls”), here cements her genius status by finding depths beyond the contrived screenplay.
• 58 The A.V. Club Caroline Siede The A.V. Club Caroline Siede Unfortunately, welcome insight into the physical and emotional experience of living with cystic fibrosis eventually gives way to increasingly improbable romantic and dramatic scenarios...By its third act, the film almost starts to feel like a parody of the most maudlin conventions of the “sick teen romance” genre.
• 50 Slant Magazine Keith Watson Slant Magazine Keith Watson In the film, hardly any fact about cystic fibrosis is raised without being doubly, even triply, underlined for viewers.
• 50 Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz It’s a weird little genre, the sick-teen romance. “Five Feet Apart” winds up as just a pedestrian entry in it, because it tries way too hard on the melodrama front. Being a teenager is difficult enough. Being a sick teenager is presumably that much harder. Being a teenager in “Five Feet Apart” means suffering from something else, in addition: overkill. And that’s deadly.
• 50 San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle At 116 minutes, Five Feet Apart is too much of a just-OK thing. All the same, I want to see Haley Lu Richardson’s next movie.
• 50 Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips But Haley Lu Richardson’s in it. She’s excellent. In fact, she’s reliably excellent. In “Five Feet Apart” she goes 10 rounds with dreckdom, and wins. Scene after scene the movie becomes a two-hour demonstration in the art, craft and mystery of what a performer can do to make you believe, in spite of the things they actually have to say.
• 40 The Hollywood Reporter Caryn James The Hollywood Reporter Caryn James The film becomes more exhausting than tense. In the end, all that manipulation backfires. Unlike the best of its genre, the rote Five Feet Apart isn’t wrenching enough to jerk a single tear.
• See all 27 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Five Feet Apart

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• DVD & Streaming

Five Feet Apart

• Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

• March 15, 2019
• Haley Lu Richardson as Stella; Cole Sprouse as Will; Claire Forlani as Meredith; Moises Arias as Poe; Parminder Nagra as Dr. Noor Hamid; Gary Weeks as Tom; Kimberly Herbert Gregory as Nurse Barb; Emily Baldoni as Nurse; Sophia Bernard as Abby; Cynthia Evans as Erin

Home Release Date

• June 11, 2019
• Justin Baldoni

Distributor

Movie review.

“We need that touch from the one we love, almost as much as we need air to breathe.” That’s what Stella wants, more than anything in the world. Both of those things, in fact: to touch, to breathe. But both are very difficult for Stella.

Since she was a little girl, Stella has roamed the halls and visited countless rooms in St. Grace Regional Hospital. Born with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic disorder, Stella is biding her time waiting for a lung transplant.

And like any normal teenager, she also wants to live her life—which has proven very difficult. Daily exercise, myriad medications and rigorous regimens fill Stella’s waking hours at the hospital. And if her routine wasn’t hard enough, she’s not allowed to touch other patients with cystic fibrosis if she wants to live.

It can be hard to stay positive. Which is why Stella has created her own YouTube channel, sharing the ups and downs of her disorder in an attempt to educate her viewers. But not everyone is as positive as Stella.

Will, a fellow patient at St. Grace who also has cystic fibrosis, isn’t really sold on the idea of taking his meds and following doctors’ orders. He’s of the mind that all that “junk” won’t do much but extend his suffering until he finally dies. That is, until he meets Stella.

Determined, organized and practical, Stella agrees to hang out with Will if he’ll follow the treatment schedule she plans for him. The only real requirement is that the two maintain their distance—five feet apart at all times. But what begins as an obligation turns into a deep love, one that’s fueled by hope—a hope that fights to just keep breathing.

Positive Elements

Throughout the film we see Stella, Will and another cystic fibrosis sufferer named Poe struggle to maintain positivity and hope as the disease ravages their bodies. Will, in particular, often feels that his medication and treatment are only prolonging the inevitable. But when he meets Stella, he finds a new source of strength and hope as she forces him to care for himself.

Stella begins helping Will with his daily medical regimen. She encourages him to take his medication, to do his exercises and to follow all the guidelines that have been set by his doctor. Will, in return, speaks life into Stella, affirming her beauty, intelligence and worth. He also teaches Stella how to relax and have fun. The two form an emotional bond, fall in love and learn to be vulnerable in some healthy ways.

Through the lives of Will, Stella and Poe, we learn what it means to forgive others and to accept forgiveness yourself. Stella tends to blame herself for the bad things that happen in her life; but her friends, and the medical staff around her, reassure her that there are things beyond her control that she simply isn’t responsible for.

We see the value in maintaining positivity and cherishing every moment with those we love, because no one is promised tomorrow. We also learn that human touch and intimacy are crucial to flourishing. Each of the characters learns to find hope and joy in hopeless, tragic situations as they practice loving one another well in word and deed. One girl in particular lives her life to the fullest and promises to “live big” because Stella can’t.

Spiritual Elements

Stella has a picture on her door which represents the mind, body and soul. She reads a book titled Life, Death & Immortality and tries to meditate daily.

Sexual Content

Will and Stella make it clear that they’d like to kiss and have sex. But because of their condition, they have to settle for holding hands. In one scene, Stella tells Will she’s a virgin and that she’s scared to show a man her scarred body. She takes off her dress in front of him (we see her bra and underwear) and he strips down to his boxers. After a long gaze, the two swim together.

Will lets his friends use his hospital room when he’s not there to have sex. We don’t see anything, but characters have multiple conversations and make jokes about enjoying sex, “using protection” and foreplay. Poe, Stella’s best friend, is openly gay. He talks about his sex life with multiple guys, loving his boyfriend and jokes about not liking “white boys.”

Although there is nothing sexual about the care that Stella and Will receive, we do see her scarred stomach as nurses clean her wounds. Similarly, Stella washes her hands in her bra and underwear. Stella wears a dress she deems “see through,” though only her bra straps are visible.

A group of young women discuss which type of bathing suits are “too trampy” or too modest. Another wears a cleavage-baring top. A couple is briefly shown kissing.

Violent Content

We hear that a teen girl breaks her neck and drowns while cliff diving. A young woman falls through ice and nearly drowns. A boy collapses on a hospital floor and dies. A guy performs CPR on a girl. A nurse admits to letting two cystic fibrosis patients break hospital rules, which eventually led to their death.

Will draws a sketch of a grim reaper. Will, Stella and Poe have discussions (and make jokes) about what it would be like to die from their disease.

Crude or Profane Language

God’s name is misused four times, once paired with “d–mit.” The f-word is heard twice and the s-word six times. Other profanity includes one or two uses each of “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “d–mit” and “a–hole.” A guy jokingly calls a girl a “hoe.” A girl says “screw him.” A teen uses a crude hand gesture.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Teens drink champagne at a dinner party. Stella deals with the disorienting aftereffects of anesthesia following surgery.

Other Negative Elements

Will is a rulebreaker, one who has lost hope when it comes to his life and treatment. He generally doesn’t follow his daily care schedule, and he treats life with flippancy (though this changes by the end of the film).

Stella’s grieves her parents’ divorce and blames herself for the death of a close friend—all of which she unfairly attributes to her illness. She struggles with control issues, labels herself “clinically OCD” and has difficulty getting close to some people.

A guy makes a joke about using suppositories. A teen vomits and spits up mucus.

There’s a power in love and human connection. We all crave intimacy, even if we don’t know it. We desire to be known—not just for who we are on the outside, but for who we are within. As Stella says, “Life’s too short to waste a second.” So we must invest in our relationships on this earth while we have the chance.

Stella and Will fight for deep connection throughout the entire film. Often their fight is against a real, tangible fear as they strive to maintain hope while battling a disorder that promises a short life. We see the two of them, along with friends, family and medical staff, persist in difficult times, love in word and deed, and reach for joy.

But although their actions and attitudes are often altruistic and admirable, there are aspects of this film that are not. Conversations about physical intimacy (including some about same-sex relationships) turn up, as well as multiple jokes about premarital sex. Language can be harsh, especially the film’s two gratuitous f-words. We also listen in on a number of melancholy conversations about death and mortality; they’re honest discussions, to be sure, but grim nonetheless.

Five Feet Apart is both beautiful and hopeful, problematic and tragic—especially for younger viewers. Yes, there are a lot of positive themes here. But there are also elements that might have you keeping your own viewing distance.

Be sure to read our review of the book connected to this movie: Five Feet Apart .

Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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Five Feet Apart Review

22 Mar 2019

Five Feet Apart

Familiarise yourself with Haley Lu Richardson , a memorable face in films like Split and The Edge Of Seventeen , and now the star and saving grace of Five Feet Apart , a mawkish if well-meaning teen romance directed by Jane The Virgin lothario Justin Baldoni.

Based on a YA novel by Rachael Lippincott, the film follows Stella (Richardson), a Pollyanna type who spends her ward-bound days vlogging and making copious lists to maintain some control over her disease. Everything goes out the window with the arrival of Will (Sprouse), a fellow teen whose brooding soul and black combat boots are enough to make Stella abandon all previous rules bar one imperative one: remain five feet apart at all times or risk infection. As the romantic stakes are raised and a personal tragedy befalls Stella, the five-foot limit becomes increasingly cavernous, calling to question whether the couple can survive the limits of their illness and their relationship alike.

Sprouse — a fan favourite in Riverdale — does exactly what’s required of a floppy-haired rule-breaker, but this is ultimately Richardson’s film, who brings a gutsy, snot-and-all performance to an otherwise by-the-book love story. A documentarian behind the camera, Baldoni makes a conscious effort to explain the illnesses shown on screen, using Stella’s vlogging as a neat way to raise awareness about cystic fibrosis without sounding preachy.

For all its good intentions, however, Five Feet Apart drowns in the syrupy tropes of forbidden romance. Every moment of genuine tenderness — a particular swimming pool scene features quivering aplenty — is squashed by a running-through-the-airport build-up or one acoustic cover too many. Boasting two actors capable of bringing the film a head above The Fault In Our Stars and its surrounding ilk, it’s disappointing to see a film about such a challenging subject playing it safe. The alternative might be harder to watch, but would make for a far braver film more worthy of its star couple.

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Screen Rant

Five feet apart review: the fault in our ya romances, five feet apart is a well-acted ya romance and provides some welcome representation, but eventually finds itself bogged down in shlocky melodrama..

Given its premise (two teenagers dealing with a life-threatening condition fall in love), it's near-impossible and not at all unfair to compare Five Feet Apart to the YA hit The Fault in Our Stars . Both are stories about young people who know that they're living on borrowed time and how that informs their views on romance and the future. In Five Feet Apart 's case, however, it's also shining a light on cystic fibrosis and what daily life is like for those who have the genetic disorder. As noble as the film's intentions are though, that doesn't mean it gets a free pass on using cheap storytelling tricks. Five Feet Apart is a well-acted YA romance and provides some welcome representation, but eventually finds itself bogged down in shlocky melodrama.

The film wastes little time before introducing its protagonists and fellow CF patients Stella Grant (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will Newman (Cole Sprouse). From the get-go, the characters fit squarely into the archetypes of the uptight girl (Stella even says she has clinical OCD) and the disaffected guy, but the fact that both have been hospitalized and are undergoing a special treatment - to try and combat their challenging genetic discorder - grounds their behavior in more believable human emotions. There's never any real doubt as to how the pair are ultimately going to to impact each other's lives, but Five Feet Apart nevertheless takes the time to explore the characters' psychology in depth and examine what makes them tick.

More than anything, it's Sprouse and Richardson that elevate the proceedings above the trappings of a hackneyed teen romance. The pair have brought depth and soul to their roles in coming of age fare as varied as The Edge of Seventeen and Riverdale , respectively, and there are even traces of their previous roles in the characters here (Will definitely has shades of Jughead Jones' sardonic sense of humor and his artistic sensitivity). Five Feet Apart spends little time fleshing out Will and Stella's relationships with their parents, but their romantic chemistry with one another is enough to carry the film on its own. That said, Moises Arias is a welcome addition as Poe (another teen CF patient and, basically, Stella's gay best friend), as is Kimberly Herbert Gregory as their understandably strict caretaker, Barb.

As formulaic as the narrative and players are, admittedly, that's kind of the point: Five Feet Apart is meant to be a typical love story, just one where the main characters have a genetic disorder. Director Justin Baldoni - aka. Rafael Solano on Jane the Virgin - uses a number of familiar techniques from the YA romance playbook to bring Stella and Will's story to cinematic life, whether it be having them bond and fall in love through montage or employing gentle pop music to set the mood during any particular scene. His approach does little to differentiate the film from similar YA movies stylistically, but it gets the job done and keeps the focus on Will and Stella's day to day lives. Indeed, one of Five Feet Apart 's greatest strengths is the amount of time it devotes to showing the minutiae of daily life for CF patients.

Unfortunately, the film runs into a wall when it reaches its third act. Obviously, Will and Stella's story had to take a turn for the melodramatic sooner or later, but the script by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis resorts to some decidedly contrived plot twists in an effort to brings things to a head. These story beats are predicable at best and regressive at their worst, which ends up making the movie as a whole feel far more problematic than it does for its first two-thirds. Thankfully, Five Feet Apart manages to avoid crossing the line into exploitative drama and mostly lands somewhere in the middle, on the scale of tear-jerking teen love stories. Still, for a movie that toys with being a mold-breaker at times, it's a disappointing turn of events.

At the end of the day though, Five Feet Apart gives CF patients a soapy love story to call their own, if not an especially strong or memorable one. It seems unlikely to follow in The Fault in Our Stars ' footsteps and become the next YA romance sensation, but the film nevertheless has something to offer its target audience, thanks to its leads' sensitive and charismatic performances. The movie's actual title alludes to an act of rebellion on Will and Stella's parts, as CF patients are supposed to stay six feet apart at all times to avoid catching infections from each other (hence, the pair "steal" one foot back). Ultimately, however,  Five Feet Apart falls short of achieving the rebellious standard that it aspires to.

Five Feet Apart  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 112 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for thematic elements, language and suggestive material.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

Five feet apart.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Five Feet Apart (2019)

March 14, 2019 by Robert Kojder

Five Feet Apart , 2019.

Directed by Justin Baldoni. Starring Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moisés Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Parminder Nagra, Emily Baldoni, Gary Weeks, and Claire Forlani.

Two teenagers with life-threatening illnesses meet in a hospital and fall in love.

Technically not a cinematic universe, the latest edition of diseased and doomed star-crossed teenagers, Five Feet Apart , focuses on a hospital wing dedicated to treating patients with cystic fibrosis. It’s also important to note that these patients are instructed to remain six feet apart from one another at all times to negate the risk of mixing up their individual bacteria, subsequently intensifying their sickness. The first question on anyone’s mind is likely “then why the hell is the movie called Five Feet Apart “, which is a fair enough inquiry.

Haley Lu Richardson (the tremendously talented young actress that can be seen in far better films such as Columbus and Support the Girls ) spends more time inside hospitals than outdoors due to her condition (although she does have big dreams like traveling the world with her sister Abby). Despite the all-consuming frustrations piled on by cystic fibrosis she sticks to her medication and daily routines strictly, so much so that when new patient and heartthrob Will (Cole Sprouse, who cannot emote as well or hang with his co-star dramatically) shows up with a carefree bad boy attitude towards a disease he feels is not worth fighting, she becomes determined to help him get back on track, show him that life is worth living, and get as emotionally close to him as possible while acknowledging the distance rule.

On one hand, it’s legitimately refreshing to watch a sappy romance where the girl must save the boy, but I’m also not sure it matters when the results are middling at best. Naturally, a PG-13 love story is going to lob softballs at this subject matter, as evident during a thematic scene where the lovebirds strip down as much as the MPAA will allow for a movie like this, fully displaying their surgery scars and bruised bodies, but all of this is undercut by the fact that these people are extremely attractive regardless of cystic fibrosis. Sure, they also appear sickly (credit the makeup department for their efforts), but if you’re telling a romantic story about people that the majority of our shallow society would deem undesirable or unworthy of a meaningful relationship, you don’t cast these people. Hollywood will never learn, continuing to make these misguided films once a year, proving time and time again that it’s easy to find love with a terminal illness as long as your impossibly attractive.

With that said, the script from Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis draws these teenagers with intelligence and maturity that is noticeably a cut above their peers living a normal life. The story is heavy-handed but it does contain believable dialogue and motives, for the most part. Basically, Five Feet Apart truly goes off the rails with a third act so ridiculous viewers will spend most of it pondering if the movie will actually go to most painfully predictable route obvious. It’s also a narrative direction that sucks away every positive complement I just gave these characters regarding their smarts. Baffling doesn’t even begin to describe it, as the movie also shoves forced melodrama in your face with the impact of two freight trains colliding head-on.

The hospital staff is also some of the absolute worst ever depicted, including a well-meaning and caring nurse named Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory) that expresses wanting to keep Stella and Will apart so there are no repeats on her watch of a previous incident where she allowed a pair of love birds to stay close to one another in private, presumably worsening each other’s cystic fibrosis, and inevitably dying. That’s all fine and good, but her and the rest of the employees in charge of this establishment have a habit of letting anyone and everyone wander off alone without so much as a clue where they are. At one point, Stella and Will actually casually walk out of the hospital (no stealth) to take a walk and go look at Christmas lights. Now I haven’t been hospitalized since 2011 *knocks on wood* but I’m fairly certain no terminally ill teenager can get up and leave the building for any reason without some kind of confrontation, but you know, plot contrivances and all that.

It’s a shame considering there are things to like in Five Feet Apart ; Haley Lu Richardson nails her emotional monologues regarding how much cystic fibrosis has taken from her, Stella has a longtime companion named Poe (Moises Arias) struggling through relationship woes of his own (he is also gay which the film wisely never makes the defining trait of his character), it’s accurate for repeat hospital visitors to become friends with the various tender nurses out there, and no matter how ludicrous a hospital date sounds, it’s actually touching. There is also some nice cinematography that plays up the emotional struggle of being so close yet still far apart. And without spoiling anything, Stella also goes through an arc of survivor’s guilt, which has its ups and downs thematically like the rest of the movie.

The problem is that the lows of Five Feet Apart drag the teenage romance story six feet under; it doesn’t even feel crafted by the same filmmaking team (I actually checked to see if the movie switched or had multiple directors, but Justin Baldoni is indeed the only attached name) and destroys whatever goodwill that can be found up until that point. I’m not sure what’s more stupid, the final 30 minutes or the outrageously incompetent hospital staff.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated  Patreon , or email me at [email protected]

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‘Five Feet Apart’ Movie Review: A Familiar Love Story With a Bigger Message

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Five Feet Apart stars Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson as Will and Stella, two teenagers diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. It tells an emotional and heartfelt story about it and due to the illness, anyone with cystic fibrosis must never be more than six feet close to each other because of the risk of cross-contamination and infection. It’s a story of familiarity but luckily manages to bring more depth and a bigger message onto the table.

What I originally thought was going to be a copycat story to the movie The Fault in Our Stars ended up being a story with a bigger meaning than two teens falling in love but what having an illness like cystic fibrosis does to the minds of these individuals. It takes a toll on them and that message is clear as day throughout the film. The story itself is something we have seen before because it follows a familiar formula.

Unless you live under a rock, most of us are familiar with the Riverdale star Cole Sprouse, who still manages to bring his wit and charm to this role along with Haley Lu Richardson known for starring alongside Hailee Steinfeld in T he Edge of Seventeen . Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson really made this film to be a lot more than just mediocre. They portray and convey the physical and mental state of Cystic Fibrosis patients. Their chemistry really shows and shines through. Both of them taking on roles in what I believe is in a respectful manner.

This film has the typical teen love story, but it does something a little bit different, here and there. Definitely not completely predictable, but familiar. My biggest critique is the inconsistent pacing that only gets better after the first act of the film. Some of the smaller flaws do not necessarily take away from what the film’s message is and that was a huge relief despite having a couple of things happen that did not seem to make complete sense.

We learn a lot of the other battles that Richardson’s character Stella has gone through. So over time, it makes you realize that an illness is not always their only battle. An illness that can kill might not always be what will kill a loved one first. What surprised me most about this film is how it ironically felt like it took my breath away at times. Stella and Will both made me nervous, tense, and happy about what their relationship was like throughout the movie. Certain moments made me feel for these characters and honestly, it either broke my heart or warmed it.

After a slow first act, the film develops Stella and Will’s blossoming relationship with much better momentum. Even when the film rushes through certain parts of their relationship, their interactions make sense. After all, they are two very ill young teens who do not know when they could take their last breath.

In the end, Five Feet Apart tries to create a unique story and in a sense, it does, but it’s also a very familiar plot. Despite that, we have two amazing actors with some of the best interactions I have seen in ages. This movie teaches all of us that we need to remember to love in the present because what happens in life is not always in our control. And as cheesy as it sounds, you should live, laugh, and love in the now. Five Feet Apart is a story of a friendship turned love story that reflects that very message and so much more. – Jacqueline Lainez

Rating: 7/10

Five Feet Apart is currently playing in theaters.

The film stars Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory and Parminder Nagra.

Jacqueline Lainez

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Film Review | Five Feet Apart

Five Feet Apart tells the story of Stella and Will – two teenagers with cystic fibrosis – their struggles, and the love that blooms between them in the most star-crossed of places. Cystic fibrosis  is a genetically inherited disease which causes buildups of mucus within the body that eventually overcome the lungs and digestive system, leading to death. In a cruel irony, the very disease that connects Stella and Will is also what separates them. CF patients must stay six feet away from each other at all times in order to avoid catching each others’ specific strains of bacteria which can lead to serious infections, removal from the transplant list, and a much quicker death. With lives fraught with the constant prospect of death on the horizon, how is it possible to make the most of the time they have left?

At first glance, this is not the sort of film I would usually pick up as I’m not the biggest fan of watching a movie for the sole purpose of crying my eyes out. While this story has certainly made countless viewers cry, I found myself dry-eyed throughout my viewing, but instead being left at the end with a profound empathy.  Five Feet Apart  does not exist simply to cause pain. Rather, it is an exploration of what makes life so beautiful, both the parts we experience and those which we are denied. What does a relationship look like when you can’t so much as hold your lover’s hand?

The result is a bittersweet yet charming tale that keeps the audience engaged from beginning to end. Stella and Will  have spent their lives in and out of hospitals, knowing each day may be their last. They would have more right than most to be sullen and despondent at their lot in life, yet both of them find ways to express themselves: Stella with her blogging and Will with his satirical cartoons. Their situation, rather than detracting from their joy, makes each simple pleasure they experience together that much purer.

In his premiere film as a director, Justin Baldoni does an excellent job of taking a relatively small budget of 7 million and the contained space of a hospital and exploring all of the possibilities to the fullest. How would you have a date at a hospital? Where would you go? What would you do? My favorite scene of the film occurs by the pool during said date. Stella and Will, both having admitted their mutual attraction, stand before each other and strip down to their underwear. Their bodies are covered in scars  from surgeries and stomach tubes. Still, all they see is each others’ beauty. The sad truth that they will never be able to touch each other is painfully clear in this scene.

The film’s theme of joy in the face of life’s difficulties is recognizable on its own, but is even more understandable once the inspiration for the film is revealed: Claire Wineland . Best known for the Facebook page The Clairity Project and her Youtube channel, Claire Wineland was a remarkable young woman who dedicated her life to educating people on what a life with cystic fibrosis is like, both the joys and the hardships. With the certainty of an early death being taught to Claire from a young age, she ceased to fear it in the way most people do and talked openly about what it was like living with a terminal illness, the procedures and treatments she went through, as well as the fun and adventures she had with her family and friends.

Five Feet Apart: A Film Review

Claire inspired Baldoni to create  Five Feet Apart  after they collaborated together on the TV series  My Last Days. While the film was in production, she also acted as a consultant for the film and contributed in many ways such as storyboarding and brainstorming with Baldoni and writers Tobias Iaconis and Mikki Daughtry, helping Sprouse and Richardson accurately imitate CF coughs, and decorating Stella’s hospital room set. In many ways Richardson’s performance of Stella, especially her blogging, is a direct tribute to Wineland. Sadly, Claire passed away due to complications following a double lung transplant in September of 2018. Though she did not get to see the finished project, Claire certainly would have appreciated the message that  Five Feet Apart  has to share. As she explained for the blog  Death Wish Coffee ,  “As I grew up with CF, I started to realize that the way in which sick people are actually represented, and talked about in society…is degrading. People don’t see them as full, complex beings with wide ranges of emotions, life experience and valid things to share with the world,” Wineland would be proud to see that Stella and Will are both far more than their disease.

It is such a simple desire, to touch someone. Something that most of us take for granted.  Five Feet Apart  reminds us how wonderful each and every joy we have in life is and how often we take simple things for granted. Still, we are not led to pity Will or Stella and the lives they live. Disease does not limit potential and a full life is not measured in the length of days lived. Claire Wineland is certainly proof of this. This is not simply a movie to make you cry – it is a film to make you think. Watch  Five Feet Apart with a loved one and once it is over, give them a hug. Bask in the simple joy of touch. Enjoy what it feels like to be alive. *

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Meet Laura Aasland! With a BA in anthropology from Biola University, Laura is in the midst of extending her expertise with a MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University. Laura enjoys exploring the cultural effects and implications within the media we consume every day, whether that be the “highbrow art” houses in museums and galleries or the everyday stories we consume in movies, graphic novels, toys and pop culture.

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Five Feet Apart

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Five Feet Apart Parent Guide

The yearning gaze of the young lovers permeates the film and the theater like teenage pheromones..

Due to their medical conditions they cannot come within 6 feet of each other, but that won't stop Stella and Will from falling in love.

Release date March 15, 2019

Run Time: 116 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kirsten hawkes.

Seventeen-year-old Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) is doing everything she possibly can to control her cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease which is destroying her lungs and will eventually kill her. She obsessively follows her drug regimen and has even designed an app to help others manage chronic illnesses. She conscientiously remains six feet apart from friend and fellow hospital patient, Poe (Moises Arias), lest the two inadvertently share their respiratory tract bacteria and worsen their diseases. Then Stella meets Will (Cole Sprouse), the handsome bad boy on the CF ward. Their initial antagonism lasts just long enough to add some spark to the relationship before the two fall for each other. But Will isn’t just another CF patient: he’s been infected by a bacteria known as B. cepacia , which has removed him from the lung transplant waiting list. Getting close to Will could not only make Stella sicker; it could permanently disqualify her from the lung transplant she so desperately needs.

Given this premise, I expected Five Feet Apart to be a depressing movie. That it isn’t is due to the character of Stella, a young woman of such courage, resilience, humor, and grace that she would light up any film. She’s no plaster saint either – Stella struggles with fear, grief, anger, rebellion, and loss, but her unfailing hopefulness not only buoys her up, it also changes Will. That’s not to say the movie isn’t sad. It ticks all the boxes in the “teen weepy” genre and the screening I attended was full of audible sobbing.

Aside from the sexual content, parents will want to be aware of the 21 profanities in the movie and a scene where teens drink champagne to celebrate an 18 th birthday. The bigger issue for some viewers will be the medical scenes. Anyone who is easily unnerved by hospitals or medical procedures should give this film a miss. We see kids taking medication, patients coughing (even coughing up mucus), and operating rooms where blood is visible. It is worth noting that not all the medical footage is strictly accurate – people rarely come out of a general anaesthetic as lucid and attractive as they do in this film.

The upside to the medical issue at the core of this film is that it encourages discussion of serious topics, such as Stella and Will’s exploration of the meaning of death. Is death merely a prelude to a new life, as Stella insists? Or is it just a big sleep as Will postulates? And, more than most teen films, Five Feet Apart asks the question of what it really means to love, to put the needs of another ahead of your own. The answer might break your heart, but it could also be a valuable lesson for teen audiences.

About author

Kirsten hawkes, watch the trailer for five feet apart.

Five Feet Apart Rating & Content Info

Why is Five Feet Apart rated PG-13? Five Feet Apart is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for thematic elements, language and suggestive material

Violence: A main character gets angry and throws things around her hospital room. A main character pretends to jump off a roof as a joke. Sexual Content:   A young woman tells her friends to “use protection”. There is a non-detailed discussion about a couple having sex in someone’s hospital room. Two characters discuss whether one of them likes sex. A gay character discusses his past relationships without graphic detail. A gay character jokes about not liking white boys. A young woman is seen in her bra and underwear as she washes her hands in the bathroom. A main character makes a crude comment about having sex in the Vatican. A young woman runs a pool cue over her breast in front of the young man who wants to touch her. A young woman and young man strip down to their underclothes and stare longingly at each other. A couple talks about having sex, without any graphic detail. Characters talk about a girl’s breasts. Profanity: There are 21 instances of profanity or coarse language, including two sexual expletives (and possibly a muffled third), one sexual hand gesture, six scatological curses, two crude anatomical words, six terms of deity, and other assorted swear words or vulgar expressions. Alcohol / Drug Use:   Teens are frequently seen appropriately taking lots of prescription medications. At an eighteenth birthday party, the guests, not all of whom are 18 years old, drink champagne. A young woman is shown coming out of a general anaesthetic and saying things she wouldn’t normally say. Other There is a lot of graphic medical footage in the film. An infected gastric tube is shown. A main character is shown coughing and spitting up mucus. A character jokes about a suppository. A young woman undergoes two dangerous surgeries. Some blood is seen.  A main character falls through the ice on a frozen lake. Characters talk about death. A secondary character dies and the death of another character is discussed. Lungs are seen prior to a transplant surgery.

Page last updated June 13, 2019

Five Feet Apart Parents' Guide

Stella has been waiting for years for a lung transplant. Have you ever thought about being an organ donor? What are the requirements for organ donation where you live? Have you discussed your wishes with your family?

Organ donation in the United States

Organ donation in the United Kingdom

Organ donation in Canada

Are you interested in donating money to help fund research into cystic fibrosis?

Research donations in the US.

Research donations in Canada.

Research donations in the United Kingdom

Stella and Will have different opinions on what happens after death. Stella believes that death is the gateway to another kind of life. Will thinks death is the end. What do you believe? Why? Have you ever had a discussion with someone whose opinions differ from yours? Did you learn anything from them?

Loved this movie? Try these books…

Five Feet Apart, which was a bestseller on the New York Times list, was written by Rachael Lippincott and Mikki Daughtry and is the story on which this film was based.

John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, tells the story of Hazel and Augustus, both of whom are fighting battles with cancer. The novel contains a brief episode of adolescent sexual activity. Another story focused on a relationship between two somewhat younger cancer patients is Zac & Mia by A.J. Betts.

The most recent home video release of Five Feet Apart movie is June 11, 2019. Here are some details…

Related home video titles:.

Mandy Moore stars as a young woman with a hidden illness in A Walk to Remember . When the local bad boy, Landon, winds up acting with her in the school play, it changes his life.

Midnight Sun tells the story of Katie, a young woman with an illness that makes exposure to sunlight lethal. When she falls in love with Charlie, the two can only be together after dark. But Charlie doesn’t know Katie’s secret.

In Everything, Everything , Maddy is trapped at home by an immune disorder that prevents her body from fighting off any type of infection. But then she sees Olly through her window, and the two fall in love. But will they be willing to love each other at a distance?

The Space Between Us features Gardner, a young man who was born on Mars to an astronaut who had not known she was pregnant. Raised on the red planet, Gardner’s bones and organs will never be able to withstand the pull of earth’s gravity. But then he meets Tulsa online and is convinced he needs to travel to earth to see her.

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‘ripley’ review: andrew scott and dakota fanning in netflix’s moody fresh take on patricia highsmith.

Steven Zaillian wrote and directed the eight-episode adaptation, an Italian-set, black-and-white thriller about the eponymous grifter-turned-sociopath.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

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The Italy of Anthony Minghella’s remarkable 1999 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley is positively bursting with la dolce vita . 

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Steven Zaillian ‘s Netflix take on Patricia Highsmith’s novel has done away with the titular modifier. In Ripley , Andrew Scott ‘s Tom Ripley is not, in fact, spectacularly talented. He’s a bit of a grinder, a desperate man who suspects this may be his only chance to get the life he thinks he deserves. He’s grim and calculating and the Italy around him matches the tone he sets. It’s a monochromatic setting of geometrically precise architecture, of voyeuristically leering statues and gargoyles, where every alley could hide a body, where every church could hide a towering Caravaggio canvas and every frame of Robert Elswit’s cinematography bears the influence of Caravaggio’s striking use of light and shadow.

In artistic terms, Zaillian’s Ripley — he wrote and directed all eight episodes — is a palimpsest, an adaptation that knows it’s standing on the shoulder of masterpieces, principally Minghella’s film and René Clément’s Purple Noon . But the series wastes no time finding its own style and tone that distinguish it from what came before.

Like its protagonist, Ripley is a slower and more methodical take on the character. “To a fault,” viewers looking for a more instantly visceral thrill ride might decide. But this is a milieu in which I was more than happy to linger. Carried by its careful adherence to a battle-tested story, Scott’s complex central performance and some of the most breathtaking photography the small screen has to offer, Ripley is a steady yet propulsive descent into murky morality. 

You know the basic plot: Tom Ripley (Scott), in this version something of a low-level New York City con man circa 1961, is recruited by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan, in one of several cheeky pieces of casting) to go to the Amalfi Coast of Italy and bring back his prodigal son, Dickie ( Johnny Flynn ). Herbert has become convinced that Tom and Dickie were friends. They were not.

The elephant in the room, for viewers if not the characters, is that at 47, Andrew Scott is too old for the fledgling sociopath that Tom Ripley is supposed to be in the first of Highsmith’s novels in the series. He’s the right age for later Ripley adventures, in which the character goes from merely “talented” to borderline supernatural in his myriad gifts, with “escapability” first among them. 

The series puts Scott in his 30s, a more plausible stretch, but this is still not miscasting and not just because without Scott, there would be no Ripley. The maturity has thematic purpose.

Through Zaillian’s eyes, Ripley takes the core story’s backdrop of privilege to a desperate extreme. It’s one thing for Tom Ripley to be an unformed if still protean grifter at 21 or 22, but another thing still to be scraping by without an identity at 35. It’s one thing for Dickie to be on a trust fund-fueled gap year of debauchery at 21 or 22, but another for him to be dabbling in his third or fourth different creative medium — his paintings are less-than-good — in his mid-30s. All of our “heroes” in Ripley are dabblers without evident talent. Marge is a photographer and author, but neither really. Freddie is an aspiring playwright, supposedly. 

Damon’s Ripley was wholly worthy of empathy, no matter how uncomfortable it was to see yourself in his outsider status. Scott’s Ripley is much harder to get a read on — his obsession with Dickie isn’t explicitly erotic, but other characters are much more attuned to that possibility than in previous incarnations. He’s less inherently sympathetic, but there’s purpose in his desperation.

This is a version of Italy in which the land and its culture are eternal, but all our other main characters are past their expiration dates and Ripley is learning to find his own artistry in hastening that expiration. It’s not heroic, but I get it. (Look, since I’m not getting invited to Europe for the holidays…)

Rather than building suspense by making the audience wonder how Ripley will get out of his escalating — staircases are everywhere in Ripley , as everybody is aspiring to a labyrinthine upward mobility — scrapes, Zaillian builds stakes by having Ripley himself never be completely sure how he’s going to escape.

Just as Marge isn’t great at writing and Dickie isn’t great at painting, Ripley isn’t great at covering up murder. My fatigue with prestige cable’s body disposal obsession is well-established, but by showing Ripley’s attempted cover-ups in something resembling real-time — clever, intense and peppered with Grand Guignol humor — Zaillian has rejuvenated an entire genre. The series’ plotting is intricate, but Ripley’s own plotting is less preternaturally adroit. He’s promising, but too old to be a prodigy.

Flynn isn’t the louche paragon that Dickie is regularly depicted as, but he casually conveys the over-ripeness of a man to whom much has been given, but from whom nothing has been expected. The writing is less consistent with Marge, flighty enough to be the frequent target of mockery, but still smart enough never to fully embrace Tom. But I appreciated how Fanning plays that uncertainty as a fickle girl treating maturity as ill-fitting dress-up. As for Lombardi, I liked Ripley before he showed up and loved it after his arrival, delivering a symphony of withering sourness and contempt.

I’m not going to claim there aren’t places where Ripley feels indulgently protracted — I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that if you trimmed the shots of staircases and leering sculptures, you’d lose an hour — but Zaillian and Elswit make the series so rapturously pretty that my attention never waned.

The credits for the series refer to it as “Based on the Ripley novels,” when it’s almost exclusively The Talented Mr. Ripley (threads from later novels are more of an in-joke). It required almost a five-year journey just to get this one season to Netflix. But if the streamer treats Ripley as a drama instead of a limited series, it’s the sort of smart and meticulously produced literary adaptation — think TV for grownups in a Queen’s Gambit or The Crown vein — that’s worthy of across-the-board award consideration. More importantly for this Highsmith fan, it’s worthy of extending into future installments.

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