PROVOKR PICK: THE HALF OF IT
Netflix's Queer Adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac
Pride is coming early this year for Netflix with its new teen dramedy, The Half of It, written and directed by Alice Wu (Saving Face). Chinese-American teenager Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) lives with her father in the remote town of Squahamish. Being both shy and one of the few Asian-Americans at her school, she believes she doesn’t fit in and has few friends. A straight-A student, her primary social interaction comes from her side hustle, writing essays for her classmates in exchange for money. That all changes when the school jock, Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer), hires her to ghostwrite love letters for him to send to his crush, Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire). What starts as a business transaction becomes so much more when not only do Ellie and Paul become friends, Ellie finds herself also falling for Aster.
If this sounds to you like a retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac with a queer spin, you would be right. Interestingly, Netflix made another teen retelling of the famous tale with 2018’s Sierra Burgess is a Loser. That’s not to say the two movies are anything alike. Sierra Burgess is a Loser is a more direct adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac with only the genders of the three main characters flipped, The Half of It takes Cyrano de Bergerac in a different direction.
The Half of It’s world premiere was set for the Tribeca Film Festival this month, but the festival fell victim to coronavirus restrictions. Luckily for this film, it is a streaming-only Netflix original release, so the current pandemic did not affect its scheduled release date.
Watch Netflix’s The Half of It, beginning on May 1, 2020.
