Tonight I watched Five Feet Apart together with my girlfriend. We watched it together by online means as COVID just gives too many risks for my health to watch it together in our regular life. And as someone with cystic fibrosis, I have to admit that I feel really mixed about the movie. On 1 side it comes very close. On the other it feels far away.
The kind of movie is not actually new to me – I really love “If I Stay”, another teen-focused romantic drama set in a hospital setting. Comparing the 2, I would have to recommend watching “If I Stay”. But Five Feet Apart…
The reality about Five Feet Apart is that it does both good and bad things. One of the good things is how in several scenes they show and tell about real problems CF people face. One of them is the infertility part. It’s not without a reason I said this in the chat with my girlfriend:
But that’s also where it’s biggest issues are at too. To quote what I wrote to my girlfriend:
“Officially you shouldn’t be able to actually even come anywhere near others with CF like you see in this movie.”
That’s just the thing, a big hospital where you can get that close to other CF patients?
I could go into details, but there are many reviews around the web by other people with CF showing the many flaws of this movie. What I do miss in all of them is one specific point…
If you have CF, you know you cannot fall in love with a person who has CF – let alone have a relationship with him or her. It’s a given. But that doesn’t mean you cannot find love, be in a relationship or even more with someone who doesn’t have CF. It’s that which really annoyed me about this movie – Five Feet Apart made it seem like people with CF cannot ever find love with anyone else than other people with CF.
That’s while many people with CF do date, have a relationship and get married — just not with people who also have CF. Many CF advocates online even confirm this. And I can even confirm this myself. It’s not easy if you have CF, as telling the person you love that you have CF and what it means is incredibly hard — in my experience at least. But the movie did make it seem like people with CF cannot find love normally and that’s even more than the inaccuracies which made me dislike this movie and unable to recommend it…
