Me and Earl and the Dying Girl review: a teenagers’ guide to death

There is much talk of Werner Herzog in this singular, ultimately seductive story of death and alienation from picturesque Pittsburgh. The "me" of the title, an insecure young cinephile named Greg, is particularly obsessed with the classic Herzog documentary Burden of Dreams.

As Greg (Thomas Mann) and his less wound-up African-American pal Earl (Ronald Cyler II) meander about the hero’s yawning house, we hear Werner droning mellifluously about the unfairness of the universe. The story offers evidence to support Herzog’s pessimism: Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the boys’ schoolmate, has been diagnosed with leukaemia.

For all that, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which won the top prize at this year's Sundance, remains defiantly un-Herzogian throughout. It is nimble on its feet. It finds consolations in unhappiness. If we imagine a spectrum that runs from The Fault in Our Stars at the sentimental red end to Aguirre, the Wrath of God at the fatalistic violet, then Me and Earl and the Dying Girl perches centrally on the evenly balanced green.

The movie will cause fights. At times, it looks as if director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is deliberately trolling us with off-the-peg tropes from the Handbook of Quirk as each episode begins with a title card that reads “This is the part where . . . ” We always enjoy hearing vintage Brian Eno, but there’s enough here to exhaust even that artist’s most fanatical follower. The high school is, as in all such films, divided into weirdly discrete tribes: Goths, theatre nerds, princesses.

And then there are Greg and Earl's pastiches of great cinema. Making apparent use of old-school film equipment, the two lads knock together shorts with punning titles such as A Sockworth Orange (Kubrick with footwear) and 2:48 PM Cowboy (afternoon hustling). The more references you get, the more often you can pat yourself on the back.

To be fair, the director adds original flourishes to these too-cute mannerisms. Few other young film-makers use the camera in such imaginative fashion. Gomez-Rejon never settles for a lazy move or conventional framing when something more interesting is available. In one notable shot, he positions Rachel and Greg at extreme opposite sides of the wide screen, thus forcing the cinema viewer to focus solely on one or the other.

The team also manage to make Pittsburgh look unexpectedly beautiful. Movies too often focus on that city's industrial decay. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl instead deals in gothic splendour and lovely weeds fighting through distressed pavement.

What really sets it apart, however, is the honesty of the emotional interactions. This is not to pretend the picture makes any serious effort to grasp the unapproachable awfulness of dying young. You may as well ask the cameraman to shoot into the sun. But the kids do behave as kids will behave.

Greg has mastered the art of remaining mildly acquainted with each tribe, thus permitting him a tiny degree of acceptance while warding off any troubling intimacy. He will not even admit that Earl is a close friend. Nagged into visiting the unfamiliar Rachel by his chatterbox mother, he finds himself embarrassed by his growing affection for her.

If the film seems less interested in Earl and Rachel than it is in Greg, then that is, surely, because it is telling its story from the perspective of a teenage solipsist.

Let’s put that more succinctly: the film is telling its story from the perspective of a teenager. It acknowledges the selfishness. But it also allows redemption. That is the view from the green sector of the spectrum.