Directors: Tom Dean, Mike Eldridge
Writer: Tom Dean
Stars: Emilia Jones, Nick Robinson
Synopsis: The journey of a young woman, Harper, and a young man, Charlie, as they meet, leave their respective homes, and attempt to build a life together in a new city. As the driven and ambitious Harper works to build a career as a chef, and the brilliant-yet-stuck Charlie struggles to get himself on track, their relationship faces growing challenges.
Jay Kelly. Peter Hujar’s Day. The Testament of Ann Lee. Friggin’ Frankenstein. The 2025 film festival slate is experiencing a windfall of films named after their main characters, a trend as old as cinema itself, but it’s an interesting concept. For crying out loud, Bruce Springsteen didn’t even make the cut on this precursory list, and only partially because the studio behind his Jeremy Allen White-starring biopic decided to plop his last name in front of an already perfectly good title, Deliver Me From Nowhere. One can hypothesize that 20th Century Studios made that call to draw crowds who would literally only ever make their way to theaters for a biopic about The Boss if it explicitly mentioned his name on the poster, but what about Nia DaCosta’s Hedda? David Michôd’s Christy? Marc by Sofia, a documentary about Marc Jacobs directed by Sofia Coppola? Can this be chalked up to laziness? Studio brass anxiety? An awareness of mass stupidity, or, put nicely, the inability for many audiences to know what a movie is about unless it includes even just a small portion of logline within its title?
Admittedly, I’m no better, as I assumed Tom Dean and Mac Eldridge’s Charlie Harper – world premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival – was about a guy, well, named “Charlie Harper.” That was half-right, to give myself a bit of credit: The filmmaking duo’s debut feature is, indeed, about a guy named Charlie (Nick Robinson), but it’s also about a girl, Harper (Emilia Jones). Perhaps a shred of kudos is due to Dean and Eldridge for throwing those who went in blind off the scent, especially considering how much of the film’s plot centers around the female character initially perceived as a man’s last name. But the longtime short film-stalwarts would deserve even more credit if the film behind this probably-overanalyzed title trickery, a years-spanning romance that tracks its titular characters through trials and tribulations aplenty over the course of their half-decade long relationship, wasn’t such a frustratingly benign love story, one that believes an orchestra-dominated score and non-linear structure are capable of replacing emotional resonance that delves below the surface.
As if spending five years in a toxic relationship isn’t bad enough, Dean and Eldridge regrettably don’t depict one with much of anything to say about the root causes of such toxicity, nor do they bother taking any risks worth an audience’s salt with a contrived script that is primarily reliant on the sort of one-liners you might find in a Tik Toker’s digital poetry journal. When we first meet Harper – who Jones, the CODA breakout, at least attempts to imbue with convincing heartache despite the flat material she’s forced to work with – a teardrop the size of a pecan sits on her eyelid, begging be set free in order to splash onto the tabletop as she asks an offscreen man, “Are you a nostalgic person?” When he replies that he thinks so, and asks if she is, she drops what Colleen Hoover would likely categorize as a banger: “Yeah. I just wonder what purpose it serves.”
Cut to a moment tailor-made for sentimentality, one of Harper and Charlie’s numerous meet-cutes over the course of the film. They first crossed paths when Charlie was a teacher’s assistant in one of Harper’s high-school classes; he, too, was a student, a brilliant one, just a grade or two ahead of his future paramour. The soon-to-be couple passed mixtapes back and forth back then, and later mix it up at a high school party, a year or so after Charlie has graduated. When a spark is kindled, the two fall into a passionate relationship, one that experiences ups and downs aplenty – the first major hurdle is Harper’s choice to move from Florida to New Orleans to become a chef, and Charlie’s assumption that this means the conclusion of their romantic affair – yet always lands in the same place, with them together. And while Dean and Eldridge attempt to utilize their aforementioned disconnected framework in a way that complicates both partner’s memories, placing them in contrast to one another on occasion to sniff out was is truth and what is optimistic recollection, Charlie Harper’s events all seem to have been designed for them to play in such a fashion. It’s all very convenient for plotting, but not for thoughtfully detailing the complexities of a relationship they’re desperate to have feel real.
The same goes for the characters themselves, both of which feel like composite figures devised to possess every theoretically good or bad quality that any basic romantic lead should. Harper is the motivated one out of the two, the rebel who forewent college in order to pursue a culinary career. She is willing to work grueling hours under a head chef that makes Gordon Ramsey look like Elmo, and, at the same time, wants what’s best for her partner. Even still, she’s depicted as selfish, a too-driven woman who can’t accept nor heal her broken boyfriend, all while struggling to keep her own head above water. Jones manages to eke some substance out of the black hole that is her part, but putting a budding performer in such a position – not just her character re: saving the down-on-his-dumps guy, but the performer herself, charged with carrying a film that appears much heavier than it is in reality – feels like sabotage.
This wouldn’t be nearly as unforgivable if Robinson picked up some of the slack, but his chops in this instance feel as though they’ve played to the level of his role. I’ve always been uneasy seeing Robinson in projects, not because I don’t appreciate his work, but because I believe there’s so much more for him to mine from the parts he’s taken over the years. Yet I wonder if I’ve been pushing for him like a dedicated fan backs a first-round bust, long after the career has been exhausted. With his face, Robinson always tends to portray both “awestruck” and “shattered” quite well, but there’s more to rendering sensitivity and passion on screen than being a good mime. It’s especially gutting to know that Toby Wallace (an astonishing actor, known for Babyteeth and The Bikeriders) was originally attached to the part, but if I think about that too long, I get closer to tears than Charlie Harper ever manages to inspire.
As for Charlie, the character: He skipped college, too, but he’s content working at a t-shirt print shop and existing amongst his many books – he’s well-read, natch – drinking the days away to hide his declining self-worth. Making Charlie an alcoholic is one thing, a “complicated male figure” device beaten to a pulp so frequently that it wishes it was a dead horse, but to make him the thoughtful, tortured soul without real dreams worth realizing is another entirely, the sort of easy storytelling choice the film makes like its life depends on it.
In many ways, that’s exactly the case, but only because Dean and Eldridge decided that it couldn’t be anything more. It’s as if, at least cinematically, the twosome believes that relationships can only be two things: Obnoxiously romantic or furiously vitriolic, the latter quality being the one Charlie Harper leans on the most to invite reaction. To make matters worse, the picture is at its best in its final 30 minutes, a stretch that plays like an entirely different movie than the one endured for the previous hour and change. It’s there that its leads depict and dictate real thoughtfulness, genuine emotion, and experience breakthroughs that one can believe in, not feel forced to buy into for the sake of what’s in front of them. But then Brenda Lee’s “Break It To Me Gently,” the most prominent song in Charlie and Harper’s relationship, plays for the umpteenth time, and we’re reminded of a painful truth: The easy way to let someone down is often the most unbearable.
Charlie Harper premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution
