TIFF 2016 Review: All I See Is You
All I See Is You had it’s World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival to a packed house. The film tells the story of Gina (Blake Lively) and her husband, James (Jason Clarke). At the beginning of the film, the couple learns that Gina can get surgery to correct her blindness in one of her eyes. As a result of the surgery, their lives and relationship change. They are faced with obstacles that they could never have seen coming (no pun intended). It brings into question their relationship, trust and ultimately, brings them to do things that they never would’ve done.
The film is beautifully shot with many artistic elements and visuals thrown in. The creative scenes of clouds and lights are a nice touch but are slightly overdone. As a result, the artistic visuals bog down the pacing of the film. Forster does an interesting job of showing what the world looks like to Gina as she is struggling through her blindness and what it is like to see again. He plays a lot with the camera work and lenses which makes for a very intriguing visual story.
The story itself is somewhat predictable but still held my interest for the majority of the film. The film did involve a lot of ambiguity in the storytelling and visuals. There are flashbacks and things that are left to the imagination at the end. After listening to some of the audience members reactions, the film left them more confused than anything.
The performances were on point and Blake Lively gave an excellent performance as Gina. She was amazing, and her emotions felt real and translated well to the audience. Jason Clarke was also incredible. He did a great job playing the varying stages of this character and the deep, complex emotions that came along with it. The film centered much on the chemistry between those two characters and it worked very well. The casting was perfect.
All I See Is You toys with some interesting dilemmas that plague relationships such as how people evolve and change if something drastic occurs in their significant other’s life? The performances are great, the story intriguing, but what it suffers from is overuse of ambiguous storytelling and visuals that left much of the audience puzzled and slowed the film down.
