Grade: A

What’s it About?: A 15-year-old Welsh boy struggles to fit in at school and date a cool, pretty girl – but things get weird and awkward when he realizes she is a real human being with feelings of her own. It gets worse when his mother’s old boyfriend moves in next door, and he learns the truth about his parents’ own imperfect humanity.

What’s its Bechdel Test Score?: Possibly 2/3 but just barely.

What About Minorities?: There are none, but it takes place in a small Welsh town in the 90s so. I don’t know?

I have a history of being tricked into liking twee indie romance films and then realizing how hateful and damaging they are a few days later. Perhaps the same thing is happening to me with this movie – I loved it a lot, but perhaps I am overlooking the same flaws and Manic Pixie Dream Girl™ nonsense that is in every other indie romance film because I love director Richard Ayoade so much. He can literally do not wrong in my eyes.

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But I’ve had time to think about it, and this movie is still adorable. It felt very honest and autobiographical. I didn’t find it as cynical or calculated or secretly hateful as other twee indie movies. It was just sad, and very personal.

It does sort of spin you around – it seems to be the same old story of a geeky guy falling for a cool girl who is too cool to have feelings – but when it’s revealed that she does have feelings, it’s very real. There is no trick on behalf of the writer to make you completely take one side – they are both damaged and sad, and there is no competition. Oliver, as the protagonist, learns and grows. He’s trying to control the women in his life – the girl he loves and his mother, who may be having an affair with an ex-boyfriend. But when his girlfriend Jordana’s mother inconveniently gets sick with cancer, Oliver is in over his head. The film makes no allowances for Oliver – he’s overwhelmed, sure, but his mistakes are not rewarded with the girl of his dreams. He learns, and he grows.

When Oliver acts like a douche, the movie knows he’s a douche – it’s not some misreading you’ll get ridiculed by your friends for later. The audience is meant to root for Oliver to change, not root for him to get the girl the way he is. This movie really sums up awkward teenaged pain – and awkward adult pain – very well. I loved the ending of the film, which was refreshingly ambiguous but still hopeful.

So maybe I’m still suckered in by the soundtrack, and the film grade, and the footage on Super 8 and polaroid, and the 90s nostalgia and my own Great Britain nostalgia, and Jordana’s coat and haircut and sweaters, and the tangibly crummy, sad atmosphere in Oliver’s house and with his ridiculous neighbour. But I loved this movie, and I think it was honest and personal and real, which is how movies about love need to be. It wasn’t polished, it wasn’t shiny and full of perfect-looking actors.

I loved it and I think you should see it.