‘My Oxford Year’ Director on Film’s Ending, Putting Spin on Sick Lit

When director Iain Morris was approached about directing Netflix’s My Oxford Year, he thought they got the wrong person.

For Morris, a British comedy legend best known for creating The Inbetweeners, taking on a romance film wasn’t something he necessarily thought was in his future, but perhaps that was the point.

“This script came through, and I thought, ‘They got the wrong person,’ because it was quite sincere. It was quite romantic. I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder if they know what I do?,’” Morris tells The Hollywood Reporter. But when speaking with producer Marty Bowen, Morris recalls the “first thing” he told him being, “I love The Inbetweeners. I’d love [for] you to try and bring some of that energy to this and see how it goes.”

“And I’m a terribly shallow and a sucker for flattery,” Morris quips. “And I thought, ‘Okay, I wonder if I can?’ I love a good cry and Love Story is one of my favorite films of all time. I sort of always had a thing for romances. But also I just thought [I could] flex a different muscle.”

That creative muscle was flexed to bring Julia Wheelan’s 2018 novel My Oxford Year to life onscreen. The film stars Sofia Carson as Anna, an ambitious young American woman who sets out for Oxford University to fulfill a lifelong dream, and Queen Charlotte star Corey Mylchreest as Jamie, a charming professor.

Though Anna has her life planned, things take an unexpected turn when she meets Jamie and though they find a connection through literature and poetry, soon their bond alters both of their lives in unexpected ways. But Jamie’s tragic secret lingers (spoiler alert: he’s battling cancer and has decided to stop treatment to let nature take its course) and impacts not only their relationship but Anna’s life as well. And rather than try to convince him otherwise, Anna stands by Jamie and his decision, choosing to love him regardless of how much time he has left.

Taking on not only a romance film, but one featuring a lead struggling with an illness, was a challenge Morris embraced. Though heartbreaking, the film is rooted in laughter, with Jamie living his life not in a depressed state but rather choosing to live in the moment.

“I’ve been around a few sort of tragic things in my life, but people don’t live in that kind of depression. They don’t live in that world. It seems like it’s an anti-human thing to live constantly in this depressed sort of state. Often grief, particularly, is very jagged even if you’re living with an illness. You’re sort of like fine. Then you remember, ‘Oh, shit,’ and then you’re back remembering something funny,” he says.

Adds the filmmaker: “I suppose my instinct was to try and undercut all the serious points and make everything funny. But actually the sort of method muscle aspect was to make an unironic romance film. I didn’t want to undercut things. I wanted it to be genuinely like love story and kind of hopeful and sad and romantic.”

One notable funny scene is one in which Anna tricks Jamie into performing karaoke. The result – one that Corey Mylchreest told THR was “painful” to watch back — brought levity to the unknown dark elephant in the room.

“There is an incredible vulnerability to what he’s doing there. And I think for somebody who seems like he has it all and is handsome and [has a] fancy car and these women chasing [him], to see that vulnerability and self-awareness, I think that’s why Corey is such a killer. He’s got such charm,” Morris says.

Of Anna and Jamie’s dynamic, Morris notes that while much of their relationship is “rooted in humor,” poetry “allows them to have a bit of sincerity about what they’re what they’re thinking, what they’re saying to each other.”

With previous “sick lit” stories chronicling love affected by tragedy such as The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You, One Day and The Notebook, Morris notes that My Oxford Year attempts to showcase “a love story that was short but deep,” despite less time spent together. He wanted to show these two people are the love of each other’s lives, and the length of time is not what makes it a great love story. He also wanted to deliver an honest and “real depiction of somebody who’s ill but isn’t bedridden.”

But one rule Morris had for the film: No death beds. “I was like, ‘We’re having one hospital scene. That’s it.’ I really struggle with it. I don’t want it. Because you’ve seen that.”

He adds, “I like films that are about big themes. I didn’t really approach it from a kind of, ‘Oh God, not another one of these.’ I was a bit like, ‘How do we give an honesty to those big themes?’”

“We’ve got to be a love story first, and then tragedy second,” Morris also quips.

At the end of the film, a montage is shown of Anna and Jamie traveling the world together as they fulfill the travel bucket list Jamie once encouraged her to go on. However, in the final moments, the camera transitions from showing Anna and Jamie embracing to Anna standing there alone, with it then being revealed she traveled solo given Jamie has since passed. His death was never shown, nor was it known how long he had left in his life. The goal was to make an impactful ending without being literal.

“We want a sense of closure about his story, but without it being very literal,” Morris says. “It kind of felt hopeful and sad.”

Carson’s Anna is later shown to have stayed in London rather than return to New York to the Goldman Sachs job she secured. Now the student turns professor, as she follows in Jamie’s footsteps and ends the movie teaching poetry and literature at Oxford.

“How do you live your truth? And what do we as an audience want for her? And what we want for her is to do what she should be doing that she’s clearly good at that she has a passion for,” Morris explains of Anna’s ending. “We didn’t want her to go back and work Goldman Sachs and be the cleverest marketing assistant or whatever she would start off as. I think that was important, feeling like she was doing what she should be doing.”

“I really, really hope for everyone to be devastated, like I really want people in absolute bits,” Morris says of his hope for how the audience reacts to the ending.

“I would like everyone to just be crying and take away sort of sense of hope. I’d love someone one day to say to me, ‘It’s my favorite film.’”

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My Oxford Year is now streaming on Netflix. Read THR’s interview with Sofia Carson and Corey Mylchreest.