Love, accurately

By Nicholas Barber

“Like Crazy” is one of cinema’s most exquisitely accurate representations both of being in love and being in your early 20s. A prize-winner at the Sundance festival, it stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin as two students who fall for each other just before they graduate from a Los Angeles university, only to be separated straight afterwards when Jones’s visa problems keep her out of the United States. Can even the most intense relationship survive when the participants are in different time zones, with their own budding careers and separate sets of friends to think about?

“Like Crazy” marks the arrival of a 28-year-old writer-director, Drake Doremus, but it’s also a gleaming showcase for its actors, who improvise every line of their dialogue. Jones, in particular, is set to hit the same heights of stardom as her friends Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan. She has already gathered glowing reviews on stage (Donmar Warehouse), television (“Northanger Abbey” for ITV), and radio (“The Archers”), but on the big screen her disarming emotional directness has been wasted on some flawed projects, from Ricky Gervais’s “Cemetery Junction” to Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest”. Now, with “Like Crazy”, she has made a film as vibrant as her performances always are. ~ Nicholas Barber