Regretting You

The Architecture of Grief

In the modern cinematic landscape, the adaptation of the "viral novel" has become a genre unto itself—a machine designed to transmute BookTok engagement into box office receipts. It is a precarious alchemy, often resulting in films that feel less like stories and more like visual checklists of fan-favorite moments. *Regretting You*, Josh Boone’s latest directorial effort, attempts to elevate this formula by injecting the same earnest, tear-stained DNA he successfully mined in *The Fault in Our Stars*. Yet, where his previous work found a certain grace in teenage terminality, this adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller struggles to locate a pulse beneath its pristine, suburban veneer.

Boone is a director who understands the mechanics of sentimentality, but here, his visual language seems at war with the narrative’s inherent messiness. The film follows Morgan (Allison Williams) and her teenage daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) as they navigate the debris field of a singular, shattering event: a car crash that kills Morgan’s husband and her sister, simultaneously revealing that the two deceased were engaged in a long-term affair. It is a premise of Shakespearean cruelty, yet the film is shot with the soft-focus gloss of a high-budget pharmaceutical commercial.



The dissonance between the aesthetic and the emotional reality is palpable. Boone and cinematographer Tim Orr present a world of immaculate interiors and golden-hour lighting that refuses to accommodate the ugly, jagged edges of betrayal. When Morgan discovers the evidence of the affair—a cache of text messages that recontextualize her entire marriage—the camera observes her with a detached, almost clinical beauty. There is no claustrophobia, no visual disintegration to match her internal collapse. The setting remains stubbornly perfect, creating a "sterile world" where grief feels like a visitor rather than a resident.

However, the film finds its salvation in the friction between its two leads. Allison Williams, often typecast in roles requiring icy precision, brings a crumbling vulnerability to Morgan. She plays a woman whose identity was constructed around being a wife and mother, only to find the foundation of that identity was rotten. Opposite her, Mckenna Grace delivers a performance of kinetic rage. Clara is not just a grieving daughter; she is a teenager betrayed by her own lineage.



The film’s most potent moments occur not in the romantic subplots—which feel obligatory and rushed, particularly the rekindling of Morgan’s past love with Jonah (Dave Franco)—but in the silent warfare between mother and daughter. There is a specific scene in a hospital waiting room where the silence between Williams and Grace screams louder than any dialogue. Here, Boone finally allows the camera to linger on the micro-expressions of two people who love each other deeply but currently cannot stand the sight of one another. It is in these small, suffocating pockets of air that the film transcends its soap-opera trappings and touches something authentic about the isolating nature of mourning.

Ultimately, *Regretting You* is a film that collapses under the weight of its own politeness. It is too afraid to be truly ugly, too concerned with resolving its complex moral knots into neat bows. The "conversation" surrounding the film has rightly pointed out its melodramatic excesses, but the true failure is one of nerve. By smoothing over the jagged edges of Hoover’s source material with a high-gloss finish, Boone has created a vessel that holds water but refuses to spill it. We are left watching a tragedy through a pane of safety glass—we can see the crash, but we are denied the impact.



As a piece of cultural currency, the film serves as a reminder that emotional resonance cannot be engineered solely through plot twists and needle drops. It requires an honesty that *Regretting You* glimpses but rarely grasps. It is a competent, well-acted drama that regrettably chooses comfort over truth.