Summary
It doesn’t take any chances, but Forever Out of My League at least gives its likable characters a decent sendoff.
This review of Forever Out of My League is spoiler-free.
The third and presumably last — “forever” is pretty final, after all — film in a trilogy of risk-averse Italian romances, Forever Out of My League works as a continuation of the two prior movies and a nice send-off for characters we’ve grown fond of while watching them, but once again does little to really distinguish itself or be memorable in the long-term.
Part of the storied “terminal illness teen romance” canon, all three films have followed Marta (Ludovica Francesconi), a young woman suffering from Mucoviscidosis, which it took me until this film to realize is Cystic Fibrosis (she uses the dated name because it sounds funnier, which it’s hard to argue with.) Unlike the second film, which was essentially a soft reboot after Marta’s off-screen break-up with her first film beau, Forever Out of My League continues on directly from the cliff-hanger ending of Still Out of My League, with Marta’s current boyfriend Gabriele (Giancarlo Commare) racing to her bedside after a potentially life-changing lung transplant.
Thanks to the transplant, Marta and Gabriele are able to look toward the future for the first time, which includes potentially moving out of the house they’re sharing with Federica (Gaja Masciale) and Jacopo (Jozef Gjura), a difficult process for low-income youngsters that’ll require a guarantor neither of them can provide thanks to Gabriele’s free-living hippie parents being financially irresponsible and Marta being estranged from her only living relative. This quest for independence will force a few difficult questions to be asked about family and relationships, while Federica and Jacopo once again get embroiled in their own subplots involving Jacopo’s love life and Federica’s lack of fulfillment in her career.
The upside of Forever Out of My League is that the core cast is just really likable, and with all their conflict having been addressed in the first two films, there’s a sense of familiarity and camaraderie at this point that is welcome and positive. There are obviously difficulties and obstacles in the screenplay that must be surmounted, but the togetherness keeps the problems feeling manageable and their solutions sensible, preventing the film from descending into contrivance and needless drama just to create enough conflict to fill the runtime.
But the relative ease with which every roadblock is cleared here contributes to what I think is the entire trilogy’s most pernicious problem — it’s safe to a fault, with Marta’s condition only really coming up when it’s narratively convenient. While we’re often told that Marta is at considerable risk of death, we never quite believe it, and that saps some of the potential poignancy. Naturally, this installment builds to a happy ending on multiple levels, once again skirting the tough stuff in a way that feels as if it’s underusing an obviously game and talented cast. While you don’t want to psychopathically wish the worst on people, even fictional ones, it’s just hard to feel like there isn’t a better film here just wishing it could get out.
You can stream Forever Out of My League exclusively on Netflix.
