“Poetry should be lived…Let it in, and allow it to change your life.”- My Oxford Year (2025)

As an English student this film spoke to me on a profound level and made me view poetry differently, to see it for more than just words on a page. To seek the deeper meanings behind the words and seek the poetry that my heart connects to. Poetry is a core element in the love story of Anna and Jamie in this film, it is how Jamie knows Anna’s first impressions of him. It’s also how he discovers that Anna feels emotion deeply when her heart connects to a poem that he, too, connects to and knows so well that he could recite it. 

I feel like as University students ourselves we can become fully immersed in the world of this film, we know the feeling of moving into uni accommodation- maybe not as lavish as Anna’s (Sofia Carson’s) though! We too get a kebab on the way home from a night out and have deep conversations with practically strangers. We bond with people quickly who we have only just met and perhaps they feel like our family which this film captures in Anna’s birthday scene so perfectly. 

I won’t lie, I approached this film expecting it to be a cute, light hearted rom com and this film was anything but that. This film has many parallels with Me Before You, especially in the karaoke scene where Jamie (Corey Mylchreest) sings Yellow by Coldplay.

Despite the absence of the typical rom com conventions, this movie certainly has heart and passion. I feel like in the past two years many films have taken a similar narrative approach, for instance We Live in Time, even Bridget Jones: Mad about the boy and even though it’s a series One Day for sure. I think these films are provoking us to think about how love is intertwined with grief and experiencing true love means for the inevitable encounter with the pain of grief. However, these films don’t advise us to avoid love because of the inevitability of pain, they tell you to go grab it and waste no time at all doing so because time with the people you love is a gift. 

This movie had everything from the smell of books, her love of poetry and his eyes looking at her with pure adoration. I feel that the essence of the film can be captured by this one particular quote: ‘It wasn’t forever. But it was real, and that kind of love stays even when the person doesn’t’. – My Oxford Year (2025)

The ending scene where Anna is now teaching her first class at Oxford directly parallels Jamie’s, she’s smiling as she remembers him fondly and it’s beautiful. It captures how a loved one can live on through you, Anna is teaching not only for herself, but for Jamie as well. That’s love. 

‘My Oxford Year‘ is available to watch on Netflix now and, you can watch the trailer here, via YouTube: