'Five Feet Apart' opens really well with Stella and her friends. Stella checks into the hospital for help with an infection, it is her second home. She spends most of her time in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient. Her life is all about routines, boundaries, and self-control and she knows what to bring for comfort, including her stuffed panda, the laptop she uses for her vlog updates, and the pictures from her bedroom wall. She knows that her best case scenario, a lung transplant, may only work for five years. But in the CF medical relay race, the best case scenario is always just to last long enough for better treatment to be invented. Her best friend Poe is back in the hospital too. And so is Will, another teenage CF patient. While Stella is ultra, even hyper-cooperative in her treatment, hoping to be able to get the lung transplant, Will is a cynic and a rebel, in part because his prognosis is not as hopeful. Will's arrival at the hospital intrigues her almost instantly. He's the polar opposite of Stella. She has her reasons to battle through while Will is more for living for the moment, consequences be damned.
Love stories always have to have a reason to keep the couple apart and in this case, that means literally apart. Because of their vulnerability to infection, CF patients have to stay at least six feet from each other. Latex gloves, no touching, and six feet between them at all times. As Stella falls for Will she says, “After all that CF has taken from me, I don’t mind stepping one foot back.” And so they have a date, still within the walls of the hospital, (apparently hospitals have swimming pools) using a five-foot pool cue to measure their distance. And then, because they are teenagers, they take some very big risks.
Rohan and I think human touch is the first form of communication. Safety, security, comfort, all on a gentle caress of a finger or at the brush of lips on a soft cheek. They connect us when we are happy, boost us in times of fear, excite us in times of passion. Well, we need that touch from the one we love almost as much as we need air to breathe. This film touches on many of subjects, death, illness, love & even the desire of a simple touch.