After Everything: a disappointing closure for Tessa and Hardin
It is not surprising that fans are disappointed with this fifth and forced final installment of the “After” saga. The Anna Todd books on which they are based are four, plus a prequel called “Before” (which is also supposed to be a movie), and that is because of a terrible last-minute decision when filming “After: Infinite Love” , it was decided to delay the outcome with an extra film, which unfortunately causes this toxic love story, but so beloved by fans, to end up losing its direction.
In the previous film, you only reach the middle of book four (and final), in an already weak adaptation directed by Castille Landon, who had already taken charge of the third part titled “Lost Souls.”
In “After Para Siempre” or “After Everything”, the director, and now also screenwriter, deviates from the original story, to focus on a supposed path to the redemption of Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), creating a film that brings together elements original and new in a terrible way.
On the one hand, we have a tedious and redundant beginning where we see Hardin live in a toxic loop that we already knew very well from before, and that was not worth reliving. In the previous film, Tessa (Josephine Langford) has left him and now it seems to be forever. Almost two years after not seeing his beloved and without the creative capacity to continue his successful writing career, the young man travels to Portugal to visit a former conquest whom he hurt in the past in order to ask for forgiveness, which which seems like another film both technically and dramatically, all this interspersed with images from the previous films as memories of the main couple.
Towards the end, the original culmination of the book “After: Infinite Love” is resumed in an accelerated manner, resulting in a series of short scenes, without further explanation or context, where we finally see the protagonist in an active role. . Only someone who has read the books could understand this ending (more so not like it), but the public who has only followed the movies will surely feel that everything is too abrupt and without logic.
Although “After” has never been a critical favorite, it did have success among fans, who surely expect a delivery at the level of a great closing, not something that seems improvised, full of pieces that do not fit together. . A disappointing end to the story of Hardin and Tessa, and for the characters around them about whom we practically didn’t know much more either. You can tell that it was not made with love, but just as a business.
