Photos courtesy of Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios
THE MAP THAT LEADS TO YOU— 3 STARS
Sauntering around the Old World during the warm months of summer, one could easily fall in love with the radiant European locales visited in Lasse Hallström’s The Map That Leads to You. Through My Window cinematographer Elías M. Félix and the film’s four-person location management team make every nook and cranny look natural, delicate, and alive. You’re going to want to be there, making the temptation to open up the TripAdvisor or Booking.com apps from your couch while watching the movie on Amazon Prime extremely high. Alas, this is a romantic drama situation, which begs the following line of questions.
LESSON #1: FALLING IN LOVE WITH PLACES OR PEOPLE— Anyone can fall in love with pretty places, but are pretty places and a vacation romance enough to make a lasting love? With The Map That Leads to You, are our main characters in question in love with the moment they find themselves in, or the person they met to share it with? Who’s saying “I love you” after two weeks, and who’s pragmatically getting on the plane home with a mild portion of regrets? What would it take to push a short-term romance like that over the top? Ponder that answer for a bit and measure the scenario.
After a quick time jump that rewinds eight months from someone’s wedding day, Madelyn Cline, the recent star of the I Know What You Did Last Summer re-sequel-boot, is Heather, a Texan MBA grad vacationing in Europe after graduation, before embarking on a big city banking job in New York. She’s abroad with her two besties, the party girl Amy (Madison Thompson of Ozark), recuperating from a breakup, and the relaxed Connie (Disney Channel regular Sofia Wylie). From a disposition standpoint, Heather is somewhere in the middle as the meticulous leader of the trio who makes sure to schedule all available sightseeing around the youthful frivolity at their fingertips.
On a train ride to Barcelona, the last leg of their trip after stretches in Amsterdam and Paris before flying home, a backpacking New Zealander expat named Jack (KJ Apa of Riverdale and The Hate U Give) comes over and makes the odd move of climbing up to try and sleep in the empty luggage above the ladies. Continuing in true Meet Cute fashion, he strikes up a conversation with Heather, where they discover they’re carrying the same vacation read—The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway—and forgiving tolerance towards the author. This intellectual connection leads to a nightclub meet-up the same day, where Jack introduces his buddy Raef (virtual newcomer Orlando Norman) to Connie.
With Amy chasing her one-night stand and Connie newly smitten with Raef, that leaves Jack and Heather to have their own Linklater Lite walking-and-talking stroll through Barcelona in The Map That Leads to You. Jack opens up to her about his chosen and fascinating path of visiting all of the places his great-grandfather journaled about while staying to live in Europe after serving in World War II. After sneaking into and spending the night on the Telefèric de Montjuïc cablecar, the two—one untethered go-with-the-flow guy and one ultra-organized planner woman—click and become inseparable. When Jack comes into some extra money, he talks the girls into extending their trip with him and Raef to Portugal.
LESSON #2: FALLING IN LOVE WITH QUALITY TIME— Contrary to the ladies’ simple “Was there a vibe?” measurement, the true answer to the crux of Lesson #1—the questions of what could make a travel tryst permanent—is most likely quality time. Heather and Jack are granted sumptuous and meaningful shared experiences, thanks to Jack’s great-grandfather’s travelogue of old haunts. Instead of being alone or platonically neutral on their separate journeys before meeting, the two share freedom, culture, and catharsis with someone who enriches those moments. Composer Sarah Trevino, matching Hallström’s energy in this genre after Dear John and Safe Haven, paints the matching Nicholas Sparks-ian whimsy with music.
For an onscreen romance about finding happiness more than conquest, KJ Apa and Madelyn Cline squeeze the most awe and affection out of both their settings and doting partners they can from the adaptation of J.P. Monninger’s novel of the same name, adapted by Leslie Bohem (her first feature film screenplay in 14 years since The Darkest Hour) with a polish from Vera Herbert (no stranger to road movies after Don’t Make Me Go). Weathering a compatibility of opposites that creates the necessary tension and doubt cast in the film’s central relationship, Apa’s wide smile welcomes her fawning eyes and lip bite nicely when the moments are softened and the drama is forgotten. Since we’re talking vibes here, sweetness over hedonism is the temperature of The Map That Leads to You, keeping matters pretty tame and heartfelt.
In a movie where being present without the cares of future jobs or the outside world becomes a unifying emotional investment sought by two normally different people, The Map That Leads to You is missing a little bit of that extra level of dramatic bond. Jack’s path of tracing the journal’s exploits—a noble endeavor for sure—feels one-sided at times, more than something broadened to include Heather or a tsunami of pure destiny and rapturous swoon. The emphasis on quality time is greatly appreciated, but there is a nearly unshakable realization that this presented possibility of meeting the perfect man on a trip of privilege, where money and future logistics are completely secondary, feels like a fairy tale of happenstance, right there with kissing frogs to turn them into princes. The movie injects a hidden health scare that’s meant to insert a ticking clock and increase some stakes, but it’s as muted as the logistics by the end. In a way, The Map That Leads to You becomes a movie experience matching a vacation itself: something never long enough when you want it to be, and a time of freedom quickly gone when the trip is over.
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