The Half of it is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac that explores sexuality, identity, friendship, and growing up queer
Quick cut: The Half of it is a melancholy, but an ultimately joyful, exploration of growing up and exploring your identity told through a thoughtful, meditative, and heartwarming story.
To steal a term from one of the great artists working today, The Half of It feels like future nostalgia. We’ve seen the modern take on the classic play Cyrano de Bergerac countless times — there are even two other Netflix originals with the same plot. However, director/writer Alice Wu finds a singular take with the story by mining achingly personal themes that elevate it past its high school movie tropes.
In The Half of it, our Cyrano is Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), a shy straight-A student living in the small rural town Squahamish, Washington, where she and her parents immigrated to from China when she was a child — though her mother died shortly after. Her father (Collin Chou) spends his days as the signalman at the town’s only train station, and Ellie writes papers for other students to help pay the bills. This is why she is approached by jock Paul (Daniel Diemer) looking for help writing love letters to the school’s misunderstood it-girl Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire), who he has a crush on but never able to talk to in person.
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Although Ellie is initially hesitant, her interest in Aster convinces her to play along. Ellie is clearly attracted to Aster though it’s never explicitly verbalized. It’s one of the many reasons The Half of It is so refreshing. Like any other high schooler struggling with their identity or sexuality, Ellie isn’t quick to accept or even understand her feelings. All she knows is she’s intrigued by Aster and wants to “talk” to her more through Paul’s letters. And that’s what happens.
Through various letter exchanges, we learn Aster is a lover of classic movies and art. Though Paul knows less than nothing about the subjects, Ellie tries to teach him for when he finally talks to Aster in person. While they’re spending time together, Paul begins to dig into Ellie’s background. At first, she rebuffs the questions. But after realizing Paul genuinely wants to get to know here, something no one in the small town has tried to do, she relents.
Wu’s screenplay is quietly brilliant. It’s filled with character development and background that is subtly tucked in between the lines. Unlike other high school coming-of-age movies, The Half of It doesn’t feel it needs to overly explain itself. As Paul and Ellie learn about each other and understand each of their unique plights, they adjust the way they interact. In that way, it feels like director great Mike Nichols’ best work. Like his seminal coming-of-age masterpiece The Graduate — which this movie explicitly references — or the hilarious The Birdcage, The Half of It brings the story and characters to the line of absurdity but never crosses it.
She adds a layer of melancholy on the otherwise joyful film. There are jokes and characters to serve as comedic foils, Wolfgang Novogratz‘s Trig is a standout, however at the core is a wildly sensitive drama about identity and the meaning of love. And though that sounds corny, the way The Half of it explores that meaning is through meaningful exchanges between characters.
In some way, every character is underestimated. Ellie is thought to be a quiet, unassuming A-student, but has a braveness waiting to be mined. Paul, who could have easily played into the dumb jock trope, has an underlying sweetness that shows itself in some of the movie’s most heartwarming scenes. Even Ellie’s dad, who is portrayed as holding his daughter back, has a complexity that is explored in a standout scene with Paul, where he explains his emotions in his native Mandarin.
On the surface, The Half of It is a serviceable high school dramedy. However, at its core, it’s a sensitive character study of identity and how the town we grew up in shapes it, for better and worse. And though it only skims the surface of sexuality, it’s distinctly queer. The gaze is queer. The themes are queer. This is a movie that only a person that has experienced it could accomplish. And although it has all this complexity, it still has the moments of joy and levity we crave in a coming-of-age. However, those moments happen where — and between characters — we least expect them. This is a love story. But not between who you think.
There’s a chance The Half of It fades into the background of the multitudes of Netflix romantic comedies that are shuffled away in the mysterious algorithm. But I hope that the right audience sees it. It feels like a cliche now, but if I had seen this movie when I was a kid, I feel like the world would have been different for me. I’d see it differently. I’d understand myself and how to love differently. I’d understand that confusion is just a part of understanding. And that running after a train may look ridiculous, but that’s love.
The Half of It is streaming on Netflix.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.