Like Crazy is hooked onto a series of plot points — the bureaucratic hassles wrought by Londoner Anna's impulsive decision to overstay her student visa so she can remain in LA with boyfriend Jacob — yet it's quintessentially character-driven. Director Drake Doremus gave Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin the story basics, allowed them to invent the dialogue, and let his camera buzz around them. The result is an unsentimental but emotionally engaging portrait of how a couple can make a relationship work — or not — when half a world separates them. Doremus presents the story in shards, lingering on certain moments, then jump-cutting forward in time. Often the gesture withdrawn is more important than the one offered, evidence of the filmmaker's insistence on capturing real, rather than movie-friendly, reactions. Jones is a revelation as the sophisticated, but humanly frail, Anna. Yelchin is also fine as Jacob, who prizes the tangible over the verbal.
