After watching “My Oxford Year”

The movie "My Oxford Year" that I watched this week on Netflix reminds me very much of "Love Story" I saw back in 1971. I liked it, but could not shake out the sense of having seen the easy copy of an original. There’s in fact lots of common elements between the two. 

For one thing, My Oxford Year’s director Iain Morris, has openly acknowledged Love Story as one of his favorite films and a key inspiration for the tone and emotional direction of My Oxford Year. He described wanting to make a romance film,” that was “hopeful, sad and romantic”—very much in the spirit of Love Story. 

Both movies share parallel themes, as they both take place in two prestigious universities, Harvard and Oxford, with an ambitious female student as the protagonist. Both films are romantic, intellectual and emotionally intense, featuring tragic the tragic illness of one of their main heroes and each story is about love in the face of loss and as a choice, even amid grief. 

The emotional atmosphere of Love Story with its young love, personal sacrifice, and the ache of impending loss, is clearly echoed in My Oxford Year. Even the structure of the narrative, where love deepens just as time runs out, feels like a modern homage or perhaps an updated version of a huge international cinematic success?