“Me Before You” film, promo for assisted suicide

An awful movie, extremely well done. Subtitle would be “a defense of assisted suicide.” From start to finish, it’s a set-up, preparing us for the most antiseptic horrible ending you could imagine.

Handsome young daredevil hedonist hit by motorcycle in rush-hour London traffic had everything, lost it in a minute except for his and his parents’ enormous wealth, including ownership of a huge castle on a huge park-size estate.

Here he suffers in style but suffers nonetheless, but here he also finds joy and happiness which distracts him from his plans to end it all, thanks to a young local who, desperate for work, takes the job of his non-medical professional companion.

She’s a natural, a true diamond in the rough, wholesome, cute, lively, full of love and kindness for her fellow man. The actors deliver in a skillful production, and we the viewers are gripped by the (melo)drama of it all as she gets through his defenses and by charm and intelligence and sheer brightness and lovingness of personality and character gives him a new lease on life.

But a lease is not a sale, and he succumbs in the end to his wish to be relieved of life itself, immensely grateful for the respite she provided and having set her up financially and psychologically for a better life than she could have had or would have dreamed of having, while he drifted off to nothingness.

Is that all there is, Peggy Lee sang years ago, and the movie endorses that message. Life is good until your spinal cord is cut in two, at which point you’d best sever it all and die forever after — a new Hollywood ending, a variation on or new version of Porky Pig’s “Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th… That’s all, folks!”

It’s a fairy tale with a new ending. They all died unhappily ever after.