What If
review by
ANIZ FILMVALA
*****
Director Michael Dowse take on transition of friendship to love in ‘What If’ [earlier titled ‘The F Word’]. What if your close friend is nurturing a passionate liking towards you? The predicament is a universal dilemma in today’s youth of this fast track life of sex and friendship relations. Michael Dowse gives us the cinematic vision of this beautiful evolution with great care and emotional excitement for 101 minutes.
Wallace [Daniel Radcliffe] is not so happy about his career, living with his sister and nephew in Toronto, Ontario.Being cheated by his girlfriend he decides to not be very social for a year.He is intimidate by Allan [Adam Driver] for a party where he encounter Chantry [Zoe Kazan] Allan's cousin and the two get along for a lengthy conversation and move out for a long walk and unwillingly she shares her number. Chantry has a boyfriend [Rafe Spall] but she shows desire of having a friendship with him and Wallace instantly agrees. The smooth sailing of just being a friend begins with countless meeting and even going on nude date to a island when Chantry’s boyfriend is out on work tour in Dublin.The friendship evolve's in love with some melodrama and excitement of a typical bollywood flick.
Daniel Radcliffe fits the bill of a rom-com hero and gives ample melodramatic moments of lover boy. Zoe Kazan as Chantry is delightful as a next door girl look and also sets the screen on fire with her seductive moves [when she goes through a moments of loneliness].
The film is a fitting answer to the audience who is baffled about their emotions and gives the wrong impression about their feelings to their near ones in the name of just being friends.
Cast
Daniel Radcliffe as Wallace
Zoe Kazan as Chantry
Megan Park as Dalia
Adam Driver as Allan
Mackenzie Davis as Nicole
Rafe Spall as BenJemima
Rooper as Ellie
Jordan Hayes as Becky
Meghan Heffern as Tabby
Jonathan Cherry as Josh
Tommie-Amber Pirie as Gretchen
Adam Fergus as Rolf
Lucius Hoyos as Felix
Rebecca Northan as Holly
