Deft, and Charming, Even the End

This film, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” affirms life by avoiding the clichés of teen-with-cancer stories. It is gawky, idiosyncratic, deeply felt and affecting: a fresh look at the awkward journey from teenage detachment to acceptance of real emotion.

The me in the title — ungrammatical on purpose — is Greg (Thomas Mann), an emotionally repressed high school senior in Pittsburgh, who begins the film by saying, off camera, “I have no idea how to tell this story.” Yet the story he tells is largely his own rather than that of Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the girl with deadly leukemia. He is a direct literary descendent of Holden Caulfield, self-hating, avoiding all high school groups and cliques, never getting involved.

The plot is set in motion by the not-so-innocent good deed of Greg’s mother (Connie Britton), a woman of self-approving earnestness. She nudges Greg to befriend and spend time with Rachel as a sort of public duty that will be good for his soul. Since Greg sees almost everyone and everything as an assault on his own self-created cocoon, he sees his mom’s request as a kind of death sentence of his own. Yet with his compulsive sense of courtesy, Greg tells Rachel why he has come to visit her. It's not really for her but for him, to get his mother off his back.

Greg really wants to spend most of his time with Earl (RJ Cyler), an African American from a “bad” part of town. Earl is Greg’s only friend, though Greg won't call him that for fear of emotional attachment. The two spend time making silly yet thoughtful movie parodies with titles like “Sockwork Orange” and “My Dinner with André the Giant.” Earl is funny, insightful, often blunt and wry, yet, almost like Greg, lacking an emotional vocabulary. 

The little films the young men make serve as a second language, a way to comment on their personal lives and the confusing, burdensome world around them. (One of Greg’s films is a nod to the difficulties Werner Herzog had making “Fitzcarraldo.”) Encouraged by one of Rachel’s friends, they decide to make a movie for Rachel, an undertaking that brings them both to a new understanding of life and friendship. 

What might have been a tearjerking melodrama is saved by the fearless daring of director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, working from a script by Jesse Andrews, based on his bestselling novel. Gomez-Rejon shows off — probably too much for film purists — an audacious mix of styles and effects. His camera moves restlessly, images are sometimes seen through a fisheye lens, sometimes from the Dutch angle that tilts the image within the picture plane. Compositions are meticulous — think Wes Anderson without the twee — and frequently filled with high school hustle and bustle.

For those who care, or even recognize them, references to other films, to moviemaking itself, abound. And the film is constantly aware of its own artificial nature. But these are minor flaws in a movie so droll and whimsical, one that constantly surprises our expectations. Gomez-Rejon has directed his cast with delicacy, yet a constant sense of tone and mood. Mann and Cyler are pitch perfect, while Cooke can melt your defenses and heart just with her large eyes. 

Gomez-Rejon handles the final moments of the film with sensitivity and deftness. And Greg’s evolution, helped by Rachel’s unremitting honesty and refusal to pity herself, is powerful. This is a film that manages to be quiet, quirky, charming and uplifting in the midst of a summer of loud blockbusters.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is opening soon nationwide. 

It is rated PG-13.