"The Half of It" Is A Bold, Tender, and Beautiful Love Story

And an outstanding example of a well-done queer coming-of-age movie.

I can’t stop — won’t stop — talking about this film.

Few movies make me do that. But something about it was so utterly wonderful that it made me want to write a love letter. To the director, to the cast, to the finished product… it was truly something special. 

So, to Alice Wu’s movie “The Half of It”… here goes. 

Tender, phenomenal coming-of-age movies are made and remade and seen and worshipped by teens themselves because there’s something about long, pan-out shots and soft indie soundtracks that make us sob over lives we aren’t living and friends who aren’t ours. 

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, “Ladybird”, “The Spectacular Now”, the list goes on for miles — for the popular boy and quirky girl trope, the shy boy and cool-girl-he’s-in-love-with trope, the childhood friends to lovers trope, the friends with benefits to lovers trope, the best friend's sibling trope, the forbidden love trope, the unrequited trope, the manic-pixie-dreamgirl and her sexist soulmate trope, et cetera, et cetera. 

But these are all for heterosexual relationships. A heterosexual relationship doesn’t diminish the quality of the movie — the problem lies in quantity. 

We had “Love, Simon” in 2018, which was a sweet and funny story about Simon coming to terms with his sexuality and being openly accepted by everyone who matters in his life. We had “Booksmart” which I can’t speak to because I haven’t seen it, but I heard it was hilarious. 

But, what we didn’t have was that vibe I search longingly for in the movies I watch. That base guitar in the soundtrack. That small-town setting. Some kind of romantic inside joke that emerges just as the romance blossoms and comes full circle in the end. 

The heartache. The heartbreak. And the bittersweet ending. “The Half of It” has these things. 

The story follows Ellie (Leah Lewis), a shy writer type living in Washington who teams up with an inarticulate jock named Paul (Daniel Diemer) to help him write love letters to his crush for a bit of extra cash. His crush is Aster (Alexxis Lemire), a beautiful, unique, intelligent girl who Ellie has noticed before — which makes writing Paul’s letters and texts even easier. 

*From now on, there’s going to be spoilers. Please, please watch the film before reading the rest of this review — it’s totally worth it.

What makes this movie different from other films, featuring straight couples, is that in an lgbtq+ relationship, young love doesn’t come as easily. 

For Ellie, she’s struggling with keeping her sexuality under wraps, not knowing what her father may think and trying to understand her feelings for Aster. She also wants to protect her secret from Paul, who claims he loves Aster. Despite being from seemingly different worlds, she and Paul form a close bond and she begins to understand that they both have struggles: every teenager grows up unsure of their path. Ellie is grappling with her sexuality and her decision to leave home for college. Paul is learning what “love” is and navigating straying away from his parent’s expectations. 

Their bond makes the movie special as well — coming of age doesn’t just have to do with romance, in realistic cases. It intertwines with equally important relationships: friendship and family. Paul and Ellie’s friendship makes the movie even more enjoyable. They seem very different in the beginning, but both begin to realize they share quite a bit in common (albeit both being in love with Aster). I strongly believe that one of the best friendship dynamics is “pure of heart, dumb of ass” (Paul, in this case) and lesbian. Take Robin and Steve from “Stranger Things”. Paul and Ellie share wonderful banter and sweet moments. Part of the love story in the movie is between the two friends — they are platonic soulmates. 

“The Half of It” doesn’t stray away from topics that feel icky. Aster is struggling to find herself amidst conflicting notions from her family and their religious beliefs, and her own feelings about her sexuality. It discusses Paul’s frigidity towards Ellie when he learns she is gay (which is stemmed from, the watcher assumes, small-town ignorance and Paul’s own personal struggles with understanding what “love” really means). 

Some critics questioned why Ellie and Aster didn’t end up together in the end of the movie — why they didn’t dance together at prom or kiss in the rain or meet at a special spot for a declaration of love. I wonder how watchers missed the point. 

Firstly, there was a declaration of love — in a church, after Aster’s boyfriend lazily proposes to her and she unenthusiastically accepts — it just isn’t explicit like in other films. Ellie doesn’t want to out herself (or Aster) so the speech is personal and vague.

The movie ends with Aster still confused about her sexuality but accepting that she has time for self-discovery and Ellie telling her that she’ll be around when Aster does figure it out. And they share a kiss — that constitutes a happy ending for me, melancholy or not.

It reveals Ellie’s father’s feelings about his daughter — and he helps Paul to understand what love means to him; unwavering, untouchable love for his daughter, no matter who she grows up to be. And as he lets her go off to college, he is simultaneously accepting her for who she is and who she loves. 

Ellie and Paul also share a goodbye scene. A scene that, if not for Ellie’s sexuality, would be romantic. Early in the film, Paul and Ellie analyze an old romance movie where the male protagonist chases his love interest on a train platform. As Ellie rides off for college in her train, Paul chases after her. 

Alice Wu destroyed the heterosexual train-platform/airport-chase trope scene. Paul finally accepting Ellie for who she was and learning that platonic love is a valid form of affection ends the unnecessary assumption that male/female friendships in coming-of-age movies must end in romantic attraction between the parties. 

The assumption is that Paul and Aster will end up together, or Ellie and Aster will end up together, but the movie isn’t about pairing off. It’s about developing relationships, self-discovery, and budding sexuality. 

The story was never supposed to be just like it would be if it starred Paul and Aster — or featured a romantic relationship between Ellie and Paul. The story is not the same, because it is a queer love story. Stories like these, and the journey of two queer people falling in love, are going to be far different from straight couples in rom-coms; the experience of coming out, navigating others’ reactions, and finding self-acceptance, along with finding another person your age who has also done these things makes the journey of being a queer teenager much more intricate than being heterosexual. 

Just because Ellie and Aster don’t have the same happy, cheesy ending as characters in the romance movies we know and love doesn’t neglect the value of their love story — the importance of their relationship lies deeply in how Ellie and Aster both personally navigate their own self-acceptance. The fundament of the romance is not the relationship, but the odyssey of falling in love. 

There are some critics of queer movies who dislike that often, the plot is centered entirely around the main character’s sexuality. They argue that there is more to life than sexuality — though, for some lgbtq+ people, the process of coming to terms with their identity and coming out of the closet is certainly what their life revolves around, since it can possibly end relationships (even, unfortunately, familial relationships). But, for those who want a well-rounded story not entirely focused only on Ellie’s sexuality, “The Half of It” certainly provides. 

The story is about love, but it is not just the story of romance between Ellie and Aster. It is a story about love between Ellie and Paul and Ellie and her father. It is about the journey of discovering love, of all different kinds, with Ellie being the independent variable. 

Aster’s story was about self-discovery and coming to terms with her sexuality as it relates to her religion, family, and current relationships. She’s discovering what she wants and needs to be happy, and the point of her story is that she doesn’t know yet and doesn’t need to know. It’s about her acceptance that she WILL know, someday, and Ellie will be there to pick up where they left off because they are (essentially) soulmates. 

Paul’s story was about platonic love. He doesn’t really know what love is, not really, since he thinks all there is to loving Aster is thinking she’s beautiful and smart. Then, when he realizes that Ellie truly understands him, he thinks he loves her romantically because he doesn’t see the value of platonic love — he believes that the only way to love is romantically. In the end, he realizes that love comes in many forms, and accepts his friend as she is and chooses to love her as her authentic self. 

Ellie’s father is concurrently letting go of his daughter as she goes off to college and accepting the woman she has become, knowing that his love for her is unstoppable since she is his daughter and whatever she does, he will love and support her. 

The three supporting characters are all involved in different kinds of love. Romantic, platonic, and parental. And it all circles back to Ellie, who loves all of them in different ways as well.

And that’s what “The Half of It” did. It gave us the story of two girls, a boy, and a father learning what love means. No more, no less.