Now here’s an enjoyable anomaly. The Last Five Years is not just a romcom for people who hate romcoms, it’s also a musical – although people who devoutly hate those may not click with its literate wit and knowing, more-bitter-than-sweet poignancy. Adapted from a 2001 stage show with lyrics and music by Jason Robert Brown, The Last Five Years is somewhat school-of-Sondheim, in the best way. It’s essentially a two-hander, starting just after a New York couple’s break-up, as failed actress Cathy (Anna Kendrick) looks back on the course of her relationship with novelist Jamie (Broadway star Jeremy Jordan). Astutely structured to maximise its acidic ironies, the story skips backwards and forwards in time as Jamie hits the bestseller list and gets drunk on his own ego, while Cathy gets increasingly sidelined. She also gets wittier, as do her songs – Climbing Uphill folds her frantic internal monologue into an audition number, Kendrick babbling with sublime breathless timing: “Why am I working so hard? These are the people who cast Russell Crowe in a musical, Jesus Christ!”
It’s not as cinematically confident as it might be: director Richard LaGravenese isn’t always the most imaginative at providing visual settings. But unlike the recent stage-to-screen adaptation Into the Woods, this does feel like an organic film rather than a show forced into movie glad rags. It’s all songs, almost without dialogue, and the numbers are unfailingly sharp, though one or two take on clunky rock colourings; even then, they’re only as bad as, say, Billy Joel on one of his better days.
The two leads give this classy material the full honours. Jordan’s Jamie is energetic, goofy and mesmerisingly obnoxious. And Kendrick, slightly lost in Into the Woods, emerges to magnificent effect, her controlled singing (with just a faint register of Streisand when she wants it) and muted acting style supplying complex emotional nuance. It’s a film to bring tears to the eyes of a cynic – in fact, a cynic might relish it more than anyone, since it’s the counterpointing of exuberance with unashamed bleakness that makes The Last Five Years so rich. You may even, just possibly, come out humming the tunes.
