I love a good love story. I love the way that words and actors and scenery all find their way together. The way that I can find myself escaping life, and really just feel like life is a dream that I am watching play out on the screen. I love to dream and I love to think about the woulda, coulda, shoulda. Not in a bad way – but in a way that makes this cynic believe in love.
Poetry speaks loudly, and in it, you can find all of the things that make sense and the way that poetry gives words that we can’t find to say.
My Oxford Year is about love and poetry and finding oneself. It’s about seeing the moments and taking them all in. It’s about taking time for yourself before your time is taken, and a large percentage of it goes to everyone around you.
Sofia Carson and Corey Mylchreest – you two are perfection.
REJECTION
Anna De La Vega has gone to spend a year in England, at Oxford. Believe it or not, that’s a big dream for a lot of us, going to Oxford. The books, the history, the people… the dream.
Anna deferred a job at Goldman Sachs for a year and went to study poetry. It’s supposed to be a year all about her – studying the things that she loves and really finding herself. She’s living out her dream.
And when she gets to England, to Oxford, everything seems to be going wrong. She’s splashed by a passing car, the Professor that she wants to study with isn’t going to be teaching, and the person who is taking over the class is the guy who splashed her with the car.
She’s annoyed, and he’s annoyed, but he’s not communicative about it. We quickly learn that he’s a f*** boy, and inadvertently, we learn that he’s the last person she should want to be with. Yet, one thing I have learned in life is that you can’t fight fate.
With her list of things she wants to do in one hand and determination in her soul, Anna is going to make the best of her year.
Anna is making friends. Her friends take her to a British Pub, because you know… science. Well, that and everyone needs to try warm beer, I guess. It’s there that she’s accosted by some douchebag that thinks his khakis make him superior, when in reality, just add a Patagonia vest and he’d be some finance bro no one can stand.
As drinks are thrown, Anna leaves, and Jamie follows her out the door and takes her to a pub and then to a food truck called Dmitri’s. Apparently, it’s the food truck to end all food trucks. It was a good night for Anna, and suddenly she finds herself falling for the British man next to her that she can’t quite understand.
Jamie is complicated. He’s the guy who splashed her with a puddle, had a great time with her and then refused her, and he’s the PhD student teaching her poetry class for the semester. Jamie is challenging her at every turn and she’s not used to that.
But Anna, well Anna has more courage than most of us – because she kisses him and he rejects her when she invites him up. I woulda left and dropped the class.
But as a viewer – there is just something about Anna and Jamie that has you instantly rooting for them. You want to see them succeed. I wanted the embarrassment. You appreciate all the romantic moments and can’t help but root for them. The chemistry that these two have on screen is something I was immediately drawn to.
Don’t you just love good casting?
“PROFESSOR” (Hottie PhD Student Jamie) DAVENPORT
I am really not sure why Jamie won’t talk to his father, but you see, that’s part of the mystery to him. What is it that Jamie is hiding? Why can’t he make commitments? What won’t he let people in for?
I can’t help but instantly see a million red flags around him, and yet, it all doesn’t matter to me. What I see also is a man who just wants to be loved and not judged. Anna doesn’t know his troubles, his past, or his reputation. All she knows is that she’s attracted to this man.
There is a frustration he brings out of her. The way that he’s dismissive of her and the way that he wants her there.
She tries to make him jealous when they both stare at each other all night at the club. He wins and she leaves with the rower that she had been dancing with. He’s a drag, and he is stuck up – so yes, I clapped when she walked away from him. We all should do that.
Know your worth, ladies.
But I also got excited when the next day in class, Jamie showed his jealousy, but also gave her an experience that all of us bookworms would want to have. He took her amongst the oldest and rarest of books. Romantic move for the win!
Take note men, that’s a romantic move.
The tension between these two is hard to explain, but it is right there. It’s like slapping you in the face and screaming at your television for them to just do it already.
It’s inferred, though, and we’ll take it.
But that’s part of what I loved about this movie. It’s what I love about a lot of Sofia’s movies – she knows that she doesn’t have to get naked – it’s actually sexier when things are left to the imagination. You don’t have to see people having sex to know that they’ve connected. It’s actually sexier when it’s a look here, a look there, and a longing. No one does a look of longing better than Sofia Carson. Like no one.
And first time with him in a car? Girl… make the most of your Oxford year. I applaud.
Fun is the name of the game.
THE ROMANCE CONTINUES
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see Anna and Jamie are changing each other. There is something that they see in each other that they don’t find in anyone else. All she wants to do is get to know him, but he’s like a fortress.
Until he takes her to his home, and he tells her his brother died, and he doesn’t speak to his father. Ya, he tore off that band-aid. When a character grows and becomes vulnerable – it’s my favorite part of any movie. One of the most beautiful things is when a character sees that they are changing and they embrace it.
But why he starts to pull away is what I didn’t get. All I could think was that he really was using her. Especially when the weekend comes after she finds out that he lied to her. He said he was working on his thesis and at the library. Spoiler alert – he wasn’t.
Dude, she’s gonna easily be able to check on that. Especially when she’s friends with the librarian.
Lie better.
Her friends make her realize that he’s lying, and she’s quite upset. Drunk doesn’t help, and friends who convince her to show up at his house isn’t smart. Because when she does, everything changes. It changes for us, the viewer, and for her.
GET OUT
What we find out is that his lie was trying to protect her. He’s getting chemotherapy, we learn, and that he didn’t want her to know. Also that Jamie has some power with his lungs. The way that he yelled at her, though – I legitimately fell out of my seat.
We find out that his brother Eddie died of cancer and that Cecelia is Eddie’s ex. Jamie has been going through it all alone.
I am going to go with it was Cecelia and talk him into going to find her – explain things. He tells her it is over, and they can’t be together. Just like a man to make a decision for a woman when he doesn’t need to be making decisions for her.
Anna doesn’t want it to be over. It doesn’t matter what he thinks; she wants to be nowhere but by his side. He doesn’t need to protect her. She’ll take the messy.
It is the messiest bits that are the most important.
The thing is, though, she is going to have to accept something hard – Jamie doesn’t want any more treatment. He doesn’t want to keep putting himself through any of it, and Anna agrees to honor this choice. Honoring that choice isn’t easy, but she wants to do it because it means being there for him. She loves him.
The truth is, the messy bits of life are sometimes the best parts because they change us. They make you grow. But even though they are there and do that, the people experiencing them are still allowed to hurt.
THE BALL
Anna wants to go to a ball. Jamie has fallen for her because the last thing he wants to do is be at a ball, but he takes her. No matter what happens, he just wants his time with her to be fun.
It’s just that facing Jamie’s parents may be the hard part.
I totally understand that Jamie’s parents want him to get treatment. I can’t even imagine what it was like to lose one son, and then the second son getting sick and giving up. But his Dad accosting Anna to talk to Jamie – not okay. I don’t think that having your son’s girlfriend talk to him is helpful. Having her put her relationship in the way will only make Jamie angrier.
But she is right when she tells Jamie that he does need to fix it. Fix the relationship. Jamie is hurting, and I think we all understand that. But even in hurting, you can’t hurt everyone else.
I can’t blame him for just wanting to shut down. He deserved the inevitable to be on his terms. We all do.
HOME & BIRTHDAY FUN
Anna’s birthday and Jamie’s made the mistake of telling her she can have anything she wants.
The last 31 minutes of the movie will destroy you. I broke down in tears. Seeing the pain of a son and the pain of a father, and neither one of them is really wrong? There’s a strange thing about wanting to survive and knowing you are going to die. The pain of people not understanding what it’s like to live in pain and be a pin cushion all the time.
Jamie and his father need to make up, and this weekend, it definitely leads to that – him taking her to his childhood home was magic. He got to see what life would be like with her and to give her the love that she deserves. Jamie let her in so deep that she is his everything. But her staying – at least I think – means that he’d have to think about surviving, and sometimes that is the scariest thing to think about.
Surviving is one thing, but actually being able to live is something completely different. It’s such a burden to bear – one that no one should bear alone.
And he won’t have to. When he collapses, Anna is right there and gets him to the hospital.
This wasn’t what Anna had planned – a life of falling in love and letting go way too soon. My Oxford Year was a movie of hope and fear, of life and death, and of loving someone so profoundly that your life changes, but it changes for the better.
It will truly change your heart.
Anna de la Cruz fell in love with poetry and a man named Jamie. She took the moments that make up life and ran with them.
And that is a beautiful life lived.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- When the jerk calls her Miss Mexico, I wanted to fly through the screen and slap him
- Ana saying she has a library fetish – I understood that. Dusty books and first editions are everything
- Bacteria Overflow is the worst band name ever
- Ana signing Jamie up for karaoke – DIABOLICAL
- The grand tour Jamie suggests sounds amazing, and when he says they could go together – I was like PLEASE DO THAT
- The last 30 minutes destroyed me
- Life needs a good pair of shoes.
- That ending will forever break me, even though it was beautiful.
- Jamies Dad saying he can make his own choices. I cried
- Anna giving Jamie time with his father – it was priceless
- Cecelia saying she would do it again… for Eddie… I am sorry I hated her
My Oxford Year is streaming now on Netflix.
