REVIEW: ‘A Part Of You’ Needs More Parts

A Part of You (En Del Av Dig) is a Swedish-language Netflix Original movie directed by Sigge Eklund and written by Michaela Hamilton. It’s a powerful look at a teenager’s coping with a tragic loss. However, that power doesn’t make it an engaging watch. The movie is so physically dark and emotionally dour. Every step through Agnes’s (Felicia Maxime) grief is easily prescribed. While it dutifully reflects the experience it portrays, it’s quite trite for a movie plot.

One-note characters amplify A Part of You’s difficulty hooking the viewer. Agnes’ whole characterization is reliant. She’s sad and manic because of a tragedy. She’s crushing on her sister’s then-boyfriend Noel (Edvin Ryding) but we’re never cued into why, besides that he’s nice, unlike everyone else in her life. Agnes is in a play at school, but it’s basically just a replacement for going to therapy. All of the scenes are vehicles for expressing her obviously repressed emotions and monologuing about them through her script. The other students barely exist and her relationship with the drama teacher is bizarre and incomplete.

Fortunately, the emotional beats of the movie do work. The initial tragedy is hard to watch. It all happens on-screen and there’s a lot of heavy-handed visual and auditory foreshadowing that tragedy is about to strike during the whole opening sequence. Even though I never felt attached to Agnes as a character, every single time she had an outpouring of emotions, particularly grief, I was crying. Perhaps it was secondhand empathy derived from how truly good Maxime is at playing the range of emotions necessary to capture this kind of grief. That is commendable unto itself, even if the movie doesn’t ultimately feel like it fully earn those tears.

So much of A Part of You feels like a movie lab-made to render audiences emotionally distraught. It works. It’s just not especially entertaining along the way. The one dynamic that is generally interesting to watch is between Agnes and Noel. We’re cued in early on that Agnes might have a bit of a crush of Noel. Noel doesn’t show his cards but demonstrates his signature kindness from the onset. Henceforth, they add a little electricity to an otherwise tacit affair whenever the two are on screen together, whether in harmony or discord.

The other main dynamic in A Part of You is between Agnes and her sister’s best friend Esther (Alva Bratt). This side of the movie struggles to achieve its intended goals. Agnes’ behavior during these scenes is predictable and understandable, but that doesn’t stop it from being annoying. And while Esther responds with the same perturbance that I did watching Agnes, there’s an emptiness to their dynamic. It hits an emotional zenith eventually, but the buildup is lacking.

A Part of You is a striking depiction of loss and grief, but it feels more like a PSA for how adults should talk to grieving teenagers than it does like a fully realized movie. For much of the movie, this is fine. But during the climax, it becomes frustrating. Aspects of characters’ lives and personalities are revealed in upsetting ways. Some are the icky kind of upsetting, others manipulatively so. The former sours an already less-than-pleasant plotline rooted in something intellectually interesting but upsetting to watch. The latter is just aggravating.

If the entire lesson of the movie is that things would have been different if people just talked about their feelings and shared their demons, then that’s nice for A Part of You. But you can’t wait until the very last minute to finally demonstrate that lesson. It makes the rest of the already lethargic movie feel like a waste of time. Especially when that lesson is so incredibly obvious from the moment that Agnes and her mother refuse to communicate with each other.

It’s annoying to watch a character go through proverbial self-medication, self-destructing along the way, only for the obvious solution to present itself as if it’s something novel and profound. Talking to your mother isn’t profound. Theater class with a weird teacher and silent classmates isn’t a replacement for therapy. When you need help, get help right away. Believe me, I know that’s easier said than done, but by now, we should be beyond presenting everything A Part of You does as a healthy grieving process.

When A Part of You is focused on Agnes and Noel’s relationship, the movie is at its best. Felicia Maxime’s depiction of grieving is also very strong. The movie is a powerful depiction of a teenager coping with sudden and horrific loss. But the movie itself is drawn out and disinteresting, let alone often quite frustrating. It’s a good PSA for not bottling up your feelings. It’s not a particularly engaging movie.

A Part of You is streaming now on Netflix.