“All the Unsaid Between Us – Regretting You” has the best idea in the first few seconds of the film: While Chris (Scott Eastwood), Jonah (Dave Franco) and Morgan (Allison Williams) are on the way to their high school graduation party in a small town in North Carolina with their little sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) in tow, a radio host's voice announces “When You Were Young” by The Killers as the summer hit of the year. The time of the mid-noughties could hardly be evoked more vividly than with the sentimental pomp of this song – initially an annoying long-running favorite in radio playlists for many years and now, almost two decades later, only the nostalgic go-to karaoke choice for elderly millennials.
In the following two hours, the film also deals in detail with retrospection and regret by making a time jump of 17 years to our present after the opening sequence. Before that, however, the foundations for the impending emotional misfortune are laid: Even though she is with Chris, the school's most popular athlete, Morgan is actually in love with Jonah. However, the two don't find each other even at the end of school because Morgan becomes pregnant and so decides to marry Chris out of necessity. Jonah, who is in a relationship with Jenny, then leaves town in a hurry, only to return many years later remorsefully and impregnate Jenny at his father's funeral service.
Morgan (Alison Williams) and Jonah (Dave Franco) have been secretly in love with each other since school – but their luck is not a good one…
Admittedly, it's easy to get a little lost if you just want to retell the first 15 minutes of “All the Unsaid Between Us – Regretting You”. Obstinately winding and not always plausibly hyperdramatic, the confusion of relationships and strokes of fate line up in quick succession. Spoilers can hardly be avoided because at almost every moment something happens that has far-reaching consequences and is quickly overtaken by the next event.
This narrative method is thanks to author Colleen Hoover, on whose bestselling novel the film is based. Since last year's success of “Just One More Time – It Ends With Us”, a film adaptation of her most popular novel to date, Hoover's books are now in demand as raw material for film adaptations. “All the Unsaid Between Us – Regretting You” obviously doesn’t seem to be one of her best-constructed works.
Adults acting like 12 year olds
The story just goes on and on in a too screwed-up manner. When Jonah and Morgan simultaneously receive news of their respective partners' sudden car accident, they realize that they weren't the only ones who had secret feelings for each other: Chris and Jenny had an affair with each other for many years. And then there is Morgan's daughter Claire (Mckenna Grace), now in her teens and soon in love with Miller (Mason Thames), who is actually still in a committed relationship, but is not particularly in Morgan's favor because his father is in prison for drug trafficking…
“Find your passion,” the daughter advises her mother in one scene as she creates a mood board with life goals to achieve. A motto that the film says and repeats about as often as the realization that each of the characters is entitled to happiness. The story moves vaguely between teenage emotional chaos and mid-life crises of adults who, at best, behave like 12-year-olds in their decision-making…
Morgan only married Chris (Scott Eastwood) out of necessity because she was pregnant – actually her heart still beats for someone else…
… but that doesn't mean that the film isn't aware of this and can ultimately be a lot of fun. “Fate is a lousy traitor” director Josh Boone is simply too experienced in the easy-going staging of overly ponderous dramas. And the actors also seem to have visibly enjoyed the soap opera fates of their characters – especially Dave Franco, who at the beginning of the film plays a teenager with the grumpy vibe of a divorced father.
In this respect, it is no coincidence that the film repeatedly reminds us of the films in the “After” series (whose author Anna Todd is one of the producers here), for which what can now also be said in “All that is unsaid between us – Regretting You” was true: As long as serious melodramas continue to be a rarity in contemporary Hollywood cinema, such a courageously entertaining joke is at least the next best alternative.
Conclusion: “All the Unsaid Between Us – Regretting You” is overloaded, over-dramatized and emotionally completely over-constructed – and yet it’s still a lot of fun. Although the adaptation of Colleen Hoover's original novel gets lost in a barely manageable network of love triangles, strokes of fate and moral wisdom, director Josh Boone stages the soap opera-like chaos with the usual routine and speed.