The Map That Leads to You review – sugary Amazon romance works best as travelogue

Rising star Madelyn Cline is a charming lead in an unusually glossy streaming weepie that leads to overfamiliar territoryA book-loving American woman in her 20s decides to spend time in Europe before she settles into the safety of a finance job in New York City, but she ends up falling for a man who is harbouring a tragic secret about his future. She’s played by an in-house Netflix star, he’s played by a non-American actor known for his role in a hit TV show. The film is based on a novel and is premiering on a streaming platform this month. While this might not be dramatically similar enough to become a Dante’s Peak/Volcano situation, it’s hard not to watch Amazon’s The Map That Leads to You, out this week, and frequently think about Netflix’s loosely similar My Oxford Year, released at the start of August.What immediately separates the two, and often separates Netflix and Amazon movies in general, is the aesthetic. My Oxford Year is every bit a TV movie while The Map That Leads to You is as glossy and sweeping as one deserving of a big screen release. That’s both the Jeff Bezos budget bump but also the benefit of having a director like Lasse Hallström at the helm. The Oscar-nominated Swedish film-maker was once Hollywood’s master of the middlebrow movie, behind Sunday afternoon specials like Chocolat and The Cider House Rules. But it’s his later Nicholas Sparks adaptations Dear John and Safe Haven that made him the ideal choice here, smoothly guiding an adaptation of JP Monninger’s sappy 2017 novel The Map That Leads to You (the book is even adorned by a Sparks quote). Continue reading...

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