I went into this film blind (pun intended) not really knowing much about it at all, but needing something 'romantic' from Netlix for a Saturday afternoon. Blake Lively is always interesting to me whether in engaging dramas like Age of Adeline or in engaging nonsense such as The Shallows.
It's immediately interesting and the opening images arresting: a kaleidoscope of bodies, a couple in the throes of passion, silken sheets and milky skies - beautifully blended. The images make sense when we discover that Lively's character Gina, is blind - was blinded in a car accident that killed her parents. Her husband, James, dotes on her, caters for her every need, spoils her - he seems quietly, perhaps subconsciously grateful for the position of power their situation puts him in.
The first 30 minutes knits together the confusion and frustration of Gina's everyday life perfectly sometimes taking us behind her eyes to experience the lights and the shapes that Gina can almost see as we follow her to the pool, teaching guitar, and to the doctors where she is told that a transplant is possible.
The mood shifts dramatically when Gina regains partial sight. She gets a new lease of life. She soaks everything in. She wants to experience everything she's been missing. Gina is ecstatic in her new found sense - on a trip to Spain to visit her sister, she begins to shrug off the old Gina and starts to transform, sexing up her wardrobe, starting to wear makeup, almost purposefully seeking out moments to excite and arouse her. James starts to think that he won't be enough for her and indeed the things she took for granted are not what she expected and not necessarily what she wants.
Whilst what follows is definitely psychological, and in part thrilling, this is very much a study of a relationship on the precipice and the extremes we'll go to when cornered or desperate. Gina realises that life has options, and James will do anything he can to try and limit them, to salvage what they have.
I found this film incredibly satisfying. I found the union of Gina and James, the transition to a new way of living, Gina's effervescence for her new life and James's acute anxiety that he is about to lose everything really believable. There's a real tension and it's all played beautifully and naturally. There's a moment (a millisecond) near the end where it veers towards melodrama, and even though not the romantic comedy I was looking for, was a film I'm definitely glad I've seen.
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