SPOILERS: This column contains major spoilers for the film “My Oxford Year.”
Can one year abroad change your life? “My Oxford Year,” released on Netflix Aug. 1, shows us that even when you think you’ve got everything figured out all it takes is one decision, or one flight to a new country, to change it all for the better. Based on the novel by Julia Whelan, Netflix’s latest film is certainly an interesting addition to its romance library.
The film follows Anna De La Vega (Sofia Carson) as she spends a year in England studying Victorian poetry at Oxford University. The American’s life is changed in more ways than one when she begins a passionate and tumultuous relationship with her professor, Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest).
If you’ve seen any slightly cheesy film following an American girl in a foreign land (“Leap Year” and “What a Girl Wants” immediately come to mind for me) then you probably already have a grasp on what this movie is like. While Anna gradually gains her footing in England as she meets new people and her relationship with Jamie develops, there was always an undercurrent of her being some spunky, slightly clueless American. This cliche served as one of the most tiring aspects of the movie as the plot progressed.
Coupled with the fact that Carson seems to be typecast as the sarcastic, too-cool-to-be-here character in every one of her films, the constant “underestimated badassery” trope was overdone. While this attitude worked better in “The Life List,” which premiered on Netflix in March, it often comes across as poorly timed when much of this movie carries a more serious tone.
One of the only other extremely noticeable and overdone aspects of this movie was the exaggerated foreshadowing. As a Victorian poetry student, Anna spends a lot of time, especially at the beginning of this movie, analyzing poems. While I love a good thought provoking poem as much as the next person, the way every single bit of writing came back to the idea that “love can be fleeting” and “you should make every moment last” felt very on the nose.
We learn from the beginning that Jamie is hiding something. Though his secret illness is already known to those who read the book first, as someone who opted to go into the movie blind the constant foreshadowing made the outcome of the film incredibly obvious. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to guess the endings of sappy rom coms like this one, but even then all the not-so-subtle hints they made throughout the film left the bittersweet ending a lot less impactful. As a viewer, I don’t need someone to hold my hand throughout a film in order for me to get it. When done well, foreshadowing can be an excellent addition to already beautiful writing, but in this case it felt like the plot was being dumbed down for me.
However, not every aspect of this film was disappointing. I found that “My Oxford Year” truly excelled at something that I’ve seen other rom coms seriously lack: intriguing subplots and supporting characters.
While a majority of this film revolved around the lives of Anna and Jamie, what really brought the story to life for me were both the friends Anna made at Oxford and Jamie’s parents, William (Dougray Scott) and Antonia Davenport (Catherine McCormack). I’ve seen many rom-coms lose some of the audience's interest because they only care about developing the main characters. I don’t want to watch or get invested in a simple, two-dimensional character, even if they’re only on screen for a small period of time. But in “My Oxford Year” this isn’t an issue. Not only was I intrigued by the supporting characters and their stories I often found myself more invested in what was happening to them than anything that Jamie or Anna were doing.
Maggie (Esmé Kingdom) and Charlie (Harry Trevaldwyn), two of the first friends Anna makes at Oxford, are a hilarious duo that captured my attention immediately. Charlie's ability to break up the awkwardness in a lot of the scenes had me wishing he was on screen all the time. And I cared more about Maggie getting her happy ending with her love interest Tom (Nikhil Parmar) even more than I cared about the relationship Jamie and Anna had. Cecelia (Poppy Gilbert), Jamie’s friend and the ex-girlfriend of his deceased brother, made me cry with her story of lost love. I felt for her when she worried that she could never fall in love again after losing Jamie’s brother and rejoiced when she decided she was going to try.
Then there were Jamie’s parents who really stole the show with the emotional pull of this movie. The fear and the heartache that comes with losing a family member is a feeling that can be so universal even if you haven’t lost someone. For William and Antonia, who have already lost one child, this feeling is only amplified when it comes to Jamie and his medical care. While Jamie has no desire to try a dozen different treatments and prolong his life at the expense of losing both his freedom and himself, William pushes the issue and his son even further away. It’s a losing battle either way, but at its core it’s easy to see that this is just the story of a father fighting for a little more time with his son.
Loving someone and knowing you have an expiration date is never an easy task, and it’s certainly not an easy dynamic to portray on screen. Despite its flaws, “My Oxford Year” does exceedingly well at showing the highs and lows of Jamie and Anna’s relationship. While I could never promise this will be the best movie you’ve ever seen, I can say that it will hopefully make you think and feel more deeply about the relationships in your life, so why not try it? And as they remind us several times throughout the movie, “you should never regret the things you do, you should only regret the things that you don’t do.”
