How I Live Now (2013)

Kevin MacDonald's (Last King of Scotland, Black Sea) How I Live Know is a good film - so much so in fact that one wishes that it could have been even better. During an unspecified civil crisis, an American Girl Elizabeth ("Daisy") is sent to live with her aunt in the English countryside. Although initially resistant, she soon finds the new lifestyle beguiling and falls for her 17-year old cousin Eddie. As their love comes to fruition an atomic bomb explodes in London, martial law is established and the two are brutally separated, although they swear to reunite...

For a viewer from the UK the opening tone of this film, presenting a family of largely parentless children discovering just how dangerous and frightening the real world can become, all the while luxuriating in their independence on holiday, brought back memories of some of the productions of the now-defunct Children's Film Foundation. But then, as events dramatically unfolds (and with the distinctly un-CFF moments of romantic encounter) it becomes something else, a post-catastrophe drama harsher than could ever be presented to children. Whether one feels that the end result is a success is largely down as to how one takes the coupling of such a catastrophe with teenage romance; both are done well  - elements such the apparatus of a cruel state ranged against people, as well as the strength of love possible between the separated, reminded me of the recent White King, a less successful film - but do they co-exist without seeming forced? Daisy and Eddie work well as the couple, and the viewer certainly feels for their predicament. But one longs to know more about what the film deliberately keeps opaque and unexpressed, while it never quite convinces that the happiness of the central duo ought to be of greater concern than the survival of the rest. Ultimately, perhaps because she has to be, Daisy sometimes seems just as selfish, but in a different way, as she was at first, But then again in a world where most people would be unlikely to be happy, perhaps the viewer is obliged to relish and pursue the pleasures that are to be found, just as are the participants. Anybody else seen this?