SNP’s word of the day: Star-crossed

You should know it because: Like Crazy, the indie-kid film of the year, opens today, and if you like vicarious teenage love and crying uncontrollably, you should definitely go see it. Felicity Jones plays Anna, a British transfer student who falls in love with a good American lad in first year. The plan is to go home, get her Visa, and return to happily ever after. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t quite happen like that.

Young lovers wrenched apart—by death or by fate—in the highest bloom of their romance is a time-honoured trope in film and literature. And of course: who wants to watch two beautiful people grow old together and fight over the remote? We’d much rather see Juliet take the poison, Anna Karenina throw herself on the tracks, Maggie Cheung haunt Tony Leung from the next room, Maria clutch a dying Tony to her chest, Catherine shout Heathcliff’s name over the moors, Iseult die swooning over Tristan’s corpse, Buffy slay Angel, Brett torture Jake, Bella do whatever she does to Edward... You understand. Nothing so dramatic and final happens in the denouement of Like Crazy, which makes it all the more devastating. Not to ruin it, okay, but sometimes young love fades out, doesn’t burn away, and somehow that’s even sadder.