Director: Tiffany Paulsen
Writer: Dan Schoffer
Stars: Jenna Ortega, Percy Hynes White, Adam Rodriguez
Synopsis: It tells the story of two teens who meet and fall in love over four days of the year.
Romantic dramas like Tiffany Paulsen’s Winter Spring Summer or Fall are rarely offered without good intentions. They tend to be easy to consume, disposable but not often toxic. They aim to either feel familiar or to show viewers a fantastical version of what love and lust “could” be if relationships were meant to unfold cinematically. Films of this ilk already overpopulate 2024’s release calendar, from The Idea of You and Música to The Greatest Hits and Players. Of note: Each of those four titles belong to streamers.
Perhaps that’s an indication of Winter Spring Summer or Fall’s fate, and that’s before we note that the queen of Netflix, Jenna Ortega, helms the relatively empty drama in question. She stars as Remi, closer to a lab creation than a real character. Remi has just completed a fellowship at Google, has never partied, and is debating between attending Columbia and Harvard after high school. (They’re both safety schools.) While on the train en route to a tour at the former Ivy, she meets Barnes Hayworth (Percy Hynes White, Ortega’s Wednesday co-star); Barnes’ name was generated by an artificial intelligence software masquerading as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal library. He doesn’t want to go to college, is a soulful, tortured stoner lookalike, and represents danger to all things educational.
The makings of their will-they-won’t-they affair aren’t any more original, despite the natural chemistry Ortega and Hynes White have evidently built up over the course of a few years as screen partners. This New Jersey Transit meet-cute, as infuriating as it sounds, begins thanks to Barnes’ familiarity with Remi due to the fact that his best friend PJ (Elias Kacavas) lives across the street from Remi’s family. Barnes attempts to penetrate her steely facade by making her a playlist solely featuring the tunes of the Talking Heads, as 18-year-olds are prone to do. After Barnes directs Remi to an express train instead of a local, she lightens up a touch, and an acquaintance-ship is born. But she has “a lot of important things going on” that she won’t neglect in favor of “some cute guy I met on a train.” This can’t happen.
Until, of course, it does. Why else would we be watching? Over the course of what the film’s synopsis calls “four days”, but would more accurately be considered four seasons, this duo falls in love. David Byrne and Buffalo Tom croon as these teens, who do manage to pose as teens despite being in their early 20s, gaze longingly into each other’s eyes and dream about saving turtles in Costa Rica. (Yes, really.) Yet despite the aforementioned connection between its stars, Winter Summer Spring or Fall is hardly ever convincing, let alone natural. Its script, from Rizzoli & Isles writer Dan Schoffer, is clunky and rote, with supporting characters like Adam Rodriguez’s “Dad” and Marisol Nichols’ “Mom” that are forgettable to the point that they might as well be nameless.
Clearly influenced by Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, Paulsen and Schoffer’s right-place-wrong-time tale lacks the instinctive quality those masterworks, well, mastered en route to becoming cinematic treasures. It’s not that influences for one’s original film should be frowned upon, but when the references in question become an overwhelming framework yet fail to replicate everything the better film possesses in abundance, the new property suffers. Ortega and Hynes White aren’t to blame for their inability to be Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke; Winter Spring Summer or Fall is wholly to blame for trying to roll Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight into one Y.A. weepy.
While Winter Spring Summer or Fall will likely nab the championship belt for being the cheesiest, most mainstream title you’ll find at a major festival this year, it will invariably fall victim to a destiny as old as time: When a frustratingly vacant romantic drama falls in the content forest, and no one is around to watch it, does it make a sound? Once it lands on whatever Paramount+ plans on becoming, will fans of Ortega’s filmography pony up their subscription dollars for a film more likely to inspire fan edits on Tik Tok than it is to inspire a future sequel from Colleen Hoover’s production company? (Derogatory.) The film’s true gift is its conclusion, not for breaking any new ground nor for any shocking revelations, but for the fact that we won’t be forced to watch its lifeless liaison unfold any longer. It was always a road to nowhere; no one will blame you for not wanting to come along.
