A review of the film “How I Live Now”
This 2013 film is something of an oddity and I only checked it out (on television) eight years later because I’m a fan of the work of Irish actress Saoirse Ronan (“Hanna”, “Brooklyn”, “Ammonite”). She plays an American teenager with mental health issues who is sent to spend time with a bohemian English family and undergoes a transformation from being surly and self-centred to being brave and resourceful.
The background to this change is some kind of war but it is terribly unclear who is fighting whom and for what reason. Ronan is excellent and the other young actors appealing, while there is some splendid cinematography, but it is too all chaotic and confusing. Perhaps it worked better as the source material: an award-winning young adult novel by Meg Rosoff.