Float

Romance is in the air, and it's not just the last whiff of hormonal optimism and hastily splashed cologne drifting on the final winds of Valentine's Day. As studios try to calculate the Next Big Thing after superhero movies, there have been a lot of dice rolled on the possibility of the romantic drama making a comeback. Of course, the rom-com, the slightly sardonic but sweet-hearted cousin to the heart-fluttering tearjerker, never quite goes out of fashion as the unexpected success of Anyone But You shows. But the good, old-fashioned love story seems to be making its way back, with Anne Hathaway headlining March release The Idea of You, and Blake Lively looking to get her heart broken later this summer with It Ends With Us.

Both of those are adaptations of blockbuster novels, but the summer of romance seems to be starting early on a smaller scale with Float, a film adaptation of Kate Marchant's coming-of-age story, first published on the Wattpad platform.

The original book was a success but deeply generic (young woman goes to a remote town to find herself and falls in love with the handsome, brooding swimming instructor). It’s the kind of story that seems perfect for an undemanding mid-tier Hallmark movie. Fortunately, the film script by Jesse LaVercombe and Sherren Lee has a little more bite and tenderness, much of it coming from Lee injecting some of her own life experience into the setup. Waverly Lyons in the book becomes Waverly Liu (Kim's Convenience's Bang), the daughter of absentee parents (Fiu and Sim) who brought her to Canada and have pretty much left her to her own devices, spending more time in Taipei than in their daughter's life. So of course they don't notice when she skips out on a promising position in Toronto and washes up at the house of her free-spirited artist aunt (Krusiec) in a cozy little beachfront tourist town in British Columbia.

And, of course, that's where she meets said brooding lifeguard, Blake (Amell), who is the overprotective guardian of his rebellious teen sister (Desjardins). And, of course, Waverly falls into his arms because she can't swim, and of course true love blossoms like a water lily.

Prosaic and predictable as that sounds, Float rises higher than expectations due in part to the delicate cinematography by Alfonso Chin, and by the additions in LaVercombe and Lee's script. The none-too-subtle, multipurpose floating metaphor – in life and in water – actually plucks at the heartstrings tunefully, especially in Waverly's complicated relationship with her parents. Moreover, Amell and Bang don't push immediate chemistry between the young lovers. Instead, they warm up to each other, working through the parent issues that have cut them off from romance in the past. That little bitterness in the beginning makes that final big kiss all the sweeter.