My Summer Lair Chapter #309: Is Young Werther As Sweet As Werther’s Original Candy?
Honestly: if you’ve enjoyed (500) Days of Summer chances are you’ll adore Young Werther.
Alison Pill is the girl and the boy is…well: you decide: Patrick J. Adams or Douglas Booth?
Douglas Booth plays said Young Werther. One fateful day he’s smitten with Alison Pill (Charlotte).
There’s just one pesky problem: Charlotte is engaged to Patrick J. Adams (Albert). See?
When I first saw the trailer I instantly thought of Werther’s candy…the butterscotch hard candy from Germany, yeah?
Turns out I wasn’t that off…this wasn’t inspired by hard German candy, rather it’s inspired by a German novel: The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The opening title card of the movie reads: “Based on the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance: that drove the entirety of Europe into a full-on literary tizzy. Sort of like Beatlemania? But for books.”
When Young Werther premiered at TIFF 24 the writer and director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço wrote a reflection for the CBC:
In the end, my adaptation of The Sorrows of Young Werther is less about replicating Goethe’s story beat-for-beat and more about capturing its spirit: the intensity, the longing, the wit, the humour, the depression, the joy, the pathos and that incredible feeling of being young, impassioned and convinced that the blush of new love is the only thing that matters, even when it becomes clear that the world — and the heart — is a far more complicated place.
However, that complicated world is also…Toronto. Indeed. Toronto as Toronto is just one subtle filmmaking compliment that third rail powers Young Werther.
Another? There’s a detectable wardrobe narrative that quietly presents itself. Like a married couple…Charlotte affects Werther and he affects her. Is this a spoiler alert…see in that trailer? She goes from a white outfit to a red dress. Meaning, what?
As you’ll hear in this My Summer Lair conversation…I asked José to reveal the wardrobe narrative philosophy. In part he said to me: “the colour that we were associating with Werther so much at the beginning of the film is red. And Charlotte was much more in blues and neutrals. And over the course of the film, yeah, they start to adopt pieces of each other’s wardrobe as they’re coming together and start to even each other out.”
When is a rom-com not a rom-com? When there’s a wardrobe narrative and I guess when it’s set in Toronto.
Behold the Young Werther trailer:
This MSL conversation with writer and director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço references Soderbergh’s Oceans 11, of course (500) Days of Summer (there is a connection between the movies and I didn’t share it in these show notes!) and it ends with…two Must See Recommendations from José: Licorice Pizza and Alien: Romulus.
Huh. I did not expect us to bring up either movie when I sat down to hit record. Maybe Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza? Indie mostly non-mainstream filmmaker…yeah, maybe. That’s weird but eh…not too weird.
But Alien: Romulus? That really was an Alien reference. Strange yet delightful way to conclude our conversation.
Young Werther @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Tuesday January 7, 2025 at 12:20 pm (EST)
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