My Oxford Year (2025)

This movie is based on a YA novel of the same title--I say this because it will appropriately set your expectations. The YA that I read at least has a bit of romance and some amount of sadness bordering on tragic at times. They are decidedly not straight ahead romances, and this certainly fits that bill. Anna De La Vega is a woman who has mapped out a very successful life for herself where she is financially successful, and to date, she has followed through on that plan. She graduated from college and has a job at Goldman-Sachs, which she has deferred for a yearin order to follow a dream. She is going to spend a year studying literature in Oxford before the more serious and fiction-less part of her life begins. She has a checklist of things to do while she is there, and as soon as she has hauled her bags up to her room, she starts out crossing things off. In the chipped she chooses for the British classic fish and chips she meets Jamie Davenport, who she doesn't think much of other than that he quoted a line from the book she is reading. She does him a bad turn there, only to discover that he is her tutor and she is going to have to work with him. Luckily he is passionate about the same Victorian literature that she loves, and they fall into a bit of a love affair as well--apparently the restrictions on dating your teacher are laxer there, at least in this version of Oxford. I'll end by saying the scenes of England in general and Oxford in particular are very alluring, and this is a good poster movie for encouraging someone to study abroad--look at it all! Overall I enjoyed it, despite some very well worn tropes contained within.