After Everything
Severe sickness is like a different world altogether. Everything that matters to us in our daily life, from the least important (Will I get a parking spot?) to the most significant (Will I ever find fulfilling work?) to the monumental (Will anyone ever love me?), shrinks to insignificance when there’s only one question: Will I survive? “After Everything,” which went by the name “Shotgun” at festivals probably changed so people wouldn’t mistake it for an action film is a bittersweet romance, all bitter because this couple meets just as he gets sick, but so sweet since they’re such tender kids together.
Writer-directors Hannah Marks and Joey Power have crafted an intimate little drama that feels fresh because everything else shakes up the usual love story. In movies and in life, love usually moves back and forth and up and down, then hesitates, trusts, hopes, hurts, heals on its way to true connection and commitment. The backdrop is always infinite time passing by, especially with young couples like this in their early 20s.
Elliot (Jeremy Allen White) and Mia (Maika Monroe) are still young enough to feel forever; they’re at an age where you don’t only think you have all the time in the world but also believe wrongly that you could handle anything thrown at you anyway. They haven’t lived long enough to know what will break them apart or how little they understand about themselves or each other.
Marks and Power tell their story appealingly pointillist: showing instead of telling or burying us under exposition. We see Elliot living his life hanging out with friends and partying through a brief opening montage. Then he sees Mia on a subway platform; she’s recognizable as someone who comes into the sandwich shop where he works. She won’t give him her number but takes his instead; when they go on their first date, he has just gotten the news. What one doctor told him not to worry about, another (Marisa Tomei) said was cancer. He has to start chemo and radiation right away after he makes a sperm bank deposit for future use if he wants kids someday.
So they have a gigantic existential crisis on their very first date. No time for “Where’d you grow up?” or “What kind of movies do you like?” No: “Have you told your parents?” and comparing treatment options and survival rates on WebMD. That lets Marks and Power skip all the usual beats of a romance movie because we’re in the middle of a life or death situation right from the jump. Elliot tells Mia to leave before it gets worse; she won’t. They don’t know that it’s gonna get harder when he gets better
Only during Elliot’s remission must he and Mia strive to know themselves as individuals and as a couple when not every minute of their waking lives is qualified by the all consuming aim of battling illness. Once they’ve had the chemo, and the texting during radiation tattooing, and the head shaving, and the waiting room trips, and the bucket-list threesomes, and the impulsive “shotgun” elopement; once these things have been gotten through or past or over with, then what?
White (who also wrote) creates characters that are imperfect but always likeable, while Monroe keeps things brisk if never quite assured. The film is most alive in its surprises: A fantasy sequence where Elliot imagines a lingerie-clad and very willing Mia helping him out at the sperm bank; some “medicinal” weed smoked with Elliot’s supportive parents; these moments feel earned because they’re unforced.
It’s only ever one-note secondary characters that grate especially the couple’s roommates; Sasha Lane can’t do much more than smoke weed and obsessively watch true crime dramas, while all DeRon Horton has to do is try to make Elliot feel bad for not spending enough time with him but as long as it sticks to Mia and Elliot, it works.
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