Natasha, a teenager of Jamaican origins and a great science enthusiast, lives in New York with her family. But its existence is about to take a hard hit: in fact, within twenty-four hours she will be repatriated together with her loved ones to her native country, due to bureaucratic problems that prevent them from staying on American soil.
The girl does not want to accept the situation and even if it is the last day to give it a try, she is ready to do anything to leave all possible hope alive. So he decides to turn to a lawyer who specializes in cases like his, even against the wishes of his parents.
As he stands at the station and looks up, she is noticed by Daniel, a South Korean contemporary of hers who dreams of being a poet. He is struck by the girl’s dreamy gaze and falls in love with her at first sight, eventually chasing her and saving her from a car that was about to hit her. From that moment Daniel asks Natasha to let him prove that love exists and to give it an hour to try it out: she accepts, waiting for the fateful legal visit to determine her immediate future.
A day of love
Of course, love is unpredictable and comes when you least expect it, but what happens in the hundred minutes of The sun is also a star is the most paradoxical one has ever seen in a romantic themed film. The span of time in which the relationship between the two protagonists develops, forced by the rigid guidelines of the novel of the same name at the base, is in fact so rapid as to be false and constructed at the table and therefore emptied of any likely emotion.
The operation is undoubtedly aimed at a a specific target, a female audience aged sixteen or younger, but even from this point of view it is difficult to forgive certain naiveties that are obvious and the accentuated sentimental verve that explodes in completely random and unsolicited mother scenes: how is it possible that a girl who has never believed in love changes her mind in ‘span of a couple of hours?
Obviously, we are talking about a feeling that can perform miracles, but to everything there is a limit and the series of coincidences – epilogue included – that follow one another in the course of the story leave us surprised several times, and certainly not in a positive sense: everything happens because it has to happen, without any apparent logic that justifies what we are seeing.
Tomorrow is another day
Just director Ry Russo-Young on the importance of transitory flow he based his previous film, the most successful Before Tomorrow (2017), where mystery elements merged in the search for answers of a protagonist who finds herself continually reliving a loop with always and inevitably mournful consequences.
In this case the atmospheres are sweeter and more sugary, even too much, and the choice of the anonymous protagonists certainly does not contribute to the success of the operation: in particular Anais Lee, originally from Alaska and of mixed blood, has little of South Korean despite his maternal heritage and does not look at all like the interpreters who give faces to his family.
Between dull pop songs that accompany the tormented love-story of the two hasty lovers and the New York background captured in its most evocative glimpses, with sunsets and dawns foreshadowing a future to be experienced, The sun is also a star contains the most banal stereotypes of the vein, here slyly accentuated in favor of the relative audience that they could also appreciate, while for all the others there remains only a concentration of frankly avoidable boredom.
