Director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço’s I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More is the latest entry into a very, very long tradition – 250 years and counting, in fact. The film is a loose modernised adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1774 episolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (indeed the film was titled Young Werther on its TIFF release last year). Underscored by a jaunty harpsichord (an instrument Goethe would have been very familiar with), Lourenço’s opening title cards cheekily describe the great German author’s novel of unrequited love as “the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance that drove the entirety of Europe into a full-on literary tizzy”.
And he is not wrong! The Sorrows of Young Werther was a hit like few books before it, setting the model for literary fandoms and best-sellers of our own time and arguably kick-starting the Romantic movement. Goethe became a cultural celebrity, with influence, money, and a noble title stemming from this early success. In his own lifetime dozens of authors put pen to paper to pay homage – or spoof – with their own versions of the story and characters, though the adaptations most are familiar with today are Jules Massenet’s 1892 opera and Max Ophüls’ 1938 film, both relatively faithful in setting and plot basics. “Werther Fever” even expanded outside the literary world; dressing like Werther (blue coat, yellow waistcoat) was banned in Leipzig, and church and state authorities warned of a moral panic over the original novel’s shocking, problematic ending. While the novel does not hold the same cultural sway it once did, I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More is in plentiful company.
Lourenço subverts expectations around the original ending from the start of his film, establishing I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More as more of a rom-com than a romantic tragedy and joining the roster of Werther adaptations in a very 2020s fashion. The plot here begins with Werther (Douglas Booth) setting out to see the wonders of Toronto with his friend Paul (Jaouhar Ben Ayed), whose hypochondria keeps him largely confined to their hotel room while Werther – carefree, charming, exuberant with life’s potential – explores. A chance encounter with Charlotte (Alison Pill) and his world is turned upside down by love at first sight. Unfortunately, Charlotte is already engaged to Albert (Patrick J. Adams). Even worse, Albert is a genuinely wonderful person. But with Albert so often kept away by his work as a lawyer, Werther extends his stay in Toronto to spend time with Charlotte and the pair draw closer.
Very appropriately for its uber-Romantic source material, the film wears its heart and influences on its sleeve, and Lourenço’s affection for the source material is abundantly, often joyously clear. Werther’s first appearance is in yellow and blue, the writer Werther and Charlotte bond over is not Ossian but J. D. Salinger, and yuppie Toronto feels a startlingly good spiritual fit for Walheim (a fictional version of Wetzlar, where Goethe wrote his smash hit). Paul is an extension of Wilheim, the friend Werther writes all his letters to in the novel – brought along on Werther’s adventures but also conveniently absent from key scenes so that Werther must recount them back in with the same loquacious verve as in his predecessor’s letters. Unlike in the novel, we get to hear Paul / Wilhelm’s responses, which is a great touch on screen. Charlotte made no promise to her dying mother to marry Albert, but Albert’s proposal at her father’s funeral nods to the source material. Taking cues from Massenet’s version, Charlotte’s younger sister Sissy (Iris Apatow) is given a name and personality, and their family name – Buff – is that of the real-life Charlotte Buff with whom Goethe was briefly infatuated before she married another man; she became somewhat of a minor celebrity in her own right, though her feelings on the matter are lost to history. In all, I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More is all on the right side of knowing, a wink to clued-in viewers that still takes its choices seriously and is clearly driven by love for this continually re-told story.
The cast is fully on board with the assignment. Booth nails the combination of enthusiasm, eloquence, awkwardness, and the often-unwise deployment of all that makes Werther a frustrating but lovable character. As a symbol of Sturm und Drang, Werther is an odd fit for the self-aware modern age, but there is so much charm here that the updating improbably works.
Pill is perhaps the greater revelation; since the novel is told entirely through Werther’s letters, readers never get into Charlotte’s head. In Pill’s hands she is a very smart, very tired young woman who had to grow up and raise her siblings far too young but has not lost her sense of fun; it is no surprise she finds an escape in Werther. Lourenço wisely gives her some female friends that draw out her inner confidences, as well as no inhibitions about taking people down a notch when they step out of line. Seeing the pair genuinely having fun together, something often skipped or left ‘offscreen’ in other adaptations, is immense fun; their chemistry is unmissable, and the ensuing attraction completely believable. Combined with an affinity for capturing looks over shoulders – often with Albert caught in the middle – and the longing is palpable.
Turning The Sorrows of Young Werther into a rom-com of sorts requires some shifting of expectations from those who know the original material, not to mention a marked increase in mental health awareness from both audiences and characters. While considerably softening the ending (as Werther says, “Of course not, what is this, 18th century Germany?”), the bildungsroman spirit of self-discovery via romantic disappointment is intact in I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More.
Like many updated adaptations, however, it stumbles at points and does not always succeed in melding old stories and new sensibilities. Some of the humour relies too much on the cringe, undercutting the conflict of impossible romance with somewhat juvenile jokes. Interestingly, it struggles with pacing in the same place as does Ophüls’ film, about two-thirds of the way through the narrative when Werther is attempting to find a Charlotte-free life for himself. That said, the script avoids most of the pitfalls of translating a novel written in an entirely different time and format into modern dialogue – resulting in a film that for the most part feels unstilted and occasionally reaches the genuinely funny and heartfelt.
Updating the classics is a time-honoured tradition across mediums, and retelling favourite stories is an innately lovely, heartwarming practice: year after year, century after century, people have been moved by the same character’s triumphs and tragedies to the point that they want to make their own mark on them and share their version. It is a continual tradition of reinvention, connecting those across time through a common love and sense of meaning. Occasionally, this process is misunderstood as a cop-out and easy cash-grab (see: Netflix’s Persuasion in 2022), but when it is clear hearts and minds have been touched, the result is almost always worthwhile.
I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More does not reach the heights of 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You, settling somewhere around 2022’s Fire Island, but its fresh approach, sincerity, and excellence in characterisation make it well worth seeking out. Musing on the chaos of their lives, Albert mentions in the film’s final minutes that he does not think there’s another Werther in the world. Of course, he is wrong. There is, there has been, and there will be over the next 250 years; this one, though, is not a bad addition at all.
I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More is now available on digital and on demand.
Learn more about the film, including how to watch, at the Signature Entertainment website.
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