REVIEW: Five Feet Apart is a ten tissue weepie about two young lovers who must avoid all contact

Five Feet Apart wants its audience weeping ASAP and will stop at nothing to get eyeballs leaking. Brace yourself for major sniffles on the way.

FIVE FEET APART (M)

Rating: Two and a half stars (2.5 out of 5)

Director: Justin Baldoni (feature debut)

Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Parminder Nagra.

Their first love is a touch too much

Boy meets girl, or girl meets boy? Take your pick, it doesn’t really matter in the cloying case of Five Feet Apart.

What’s more important in this middling teen drama is that its young romantic protagonists are living with the same, possibly terminal condition. They both just might die. And you? You just might cry.

Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse in a scene from the movie Five Feet Apart. Roadshow Films.

Yes, when push comes to shove, Five Feet Apart wants its audience weeping ASAP, and will stop at nothing to get eyeballs leaking.

The disease in play is cystic fibrosis, a devastatingly destructive affliction that pits a body against its own respiratory system.

The movie does a commendable job of conveying the immense gravity of living with CF, particularly for those sufferers for whom a hospital ward is considered a second home.

It is in one such specialist care facility that we meet Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will (Cole Sprouse), mutually attracted teens unable to take their relationship to a tactile level for fear of transmitting highly contagious (fatal, even) bacteria.

Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse in a scene from the movie Five Feet Apart. Roadshow Films.

Will they keep their distance - hence the movie’s imperially measured title, in case you were wondering - or put it all on the line for just one touch?

If you wish to know the answer, be sure to buy a box of tissues before booking a ticket.

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Originally published as REVIEW: Five Feet Apart is a ten tissue weepie about two young lovers who must avoid all contact