Rent All I See Is You (2016)

All I See Is You review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

There’s a somewhat refreshing vibe to a disability story such as All I See Is You, where a blind woman slowly struggles with her personality as he blindness slowly cures. It could have run down dangerous paths of sentimentality, as with the lackluster romance weaved into At First Sight, where Val Kilmer seemed to be amazed when he regained his sight and discovered cotton candy felt like clouds. The story of the blind seeing in this movie carries a much different atmosphere that doesn’t exactly make for the best film but at least one that doesn’t feel as artificially flawed.

Blake Lively plays Gina, the blind woman yearning to retrieve her sight. She’s married to her perfect-vision husband James, played by Jason Clarke, that loves her all the same despite her smoking. She’s still great with the kids in her apartment complex, hoping to have a child of her own. And then the surgery comes to restore her sight. Sure, she’s astounded at first by all the wonderful colors she had never seen before but then a new sensation runs across her quickly; a dissatisfaction with the world she only knew through sound and touch. Their happy marriage soon turns to a frustrating one the more Gina wants to explore and the more distant she becomes from James.

It’s more refreshing to see a picture like this pose some tougher questions about when the blind can see again. The story suggests that Gina was happier in a box she couldn’t see, not truly experiencing the rest of the world from growing up blind and in a marriage to a husband she has never seen. Once she can see, Gina has her doubts about James, both physically and sexually. It may seem like such a petty thing to judge by but these are sensations that Gina never had the opportunity to use when deciding her life. A blind woman deciding to leave her husband after recovering her sight sounds more like a comedy but director Marc Forster takes care to keep it firmly rooted in the dramatic territory, even when Gina’s fascination takes on a more awkward nature with demanding more out of sex.

As with most movies about experiencing the world with a new vision for the first time, the film is beautifully shot in such exotic locations of Thailand and Spain. We have the obligatory scene of Gina’s first day out with James and she requests to be taken to the most colorful place in Bangkok. He knows the perfect answer is the marketplace of flowers and produce, leading to some visually stunning colors and scenes. There’s also a great use of lighting as in the darker scenes of their trips down the alleys of Barcelona where a strip show seems enticing to Gina and not so much for James. I’ve gotta give credit to Forster for starting this story where most of them end, with James and Gina already in a foreign land to both stage a unique location for our characters and allow Gina to not feel so alone in navigating a culture without a full grasp.

It’s truly a feat that All I See Is You wraps itself in an unorthodox tale of sight recovery and never going too melodramatic or sentimental with the experience. The performances by both Lively and Clarke are fantastic and the scenes of Gina slowly gaining and losing her sight are assembled beautifully. It’s a tale treated with the maturity a story like this deserves, where a blind wife has far more to be interested in about her newfound world than what a puppy looks like.