With its premiere on the Netflix streaming service, My Oxford Year arrives as a romantic drama navigating the well-trodden terrain of love and loss against the storied backdrop of British academia. Produced by Temple Hill Entertainment, a company with a notable portfolio in emotionally resonant narratives, the film charts the collision of two lives: Anna De La Vega (Sofia Carson), an American student of immense ambition, and Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest), her charismatic but troubled literature tutor. The film’s genesis is unusually circular: it is an adaptation of Julia Whelan’s novel of the same name, which was itself adapted from an original screenplay by Allison Burnett. Burnett returns as a co-writer for this cinematic version, completing a rare journey from screen to page and back again. The project is helmed by BAFTA nominee Iain Morris, a director whose background in comedy suggests a deliberate, and perhaps unexpected, tonal strategy for the material.
The Narrative Architecture: Love, Ambition, and the Unforeseen
The screenplay, penned by Burnett and Melissa Osborne, constructs a central dialectic between Anna’s hyper-structured ambition and the chaotic intrusion of love and mortality. The classic “year abroad” trope functions as a narrative crucible. Anna arrives at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship to fulfill a childhood dream, a goal she pursues alongside a demanding remote position on a rising star’s presidential campaign in the United States. This dual focus establishes her as a character defined by long-term planning. The narrative’s trajectory is irrevocably altered by the revelation of Jamie’s life-changing secret—a terminal illness that transforms the film from a straightforward romance into an elegiac drama. This forces Anna to confront an impossible decision between the future she has meticulously engineered and the profound, yet finite, connection she has discovered. The source material also hints at a rift between Jamie and his wealthy father, a subplot likely to add another layer of dramatic tension. This narrative turn is a significant point of consideration, as the novel drew criticism for its reliance on what some reviewers deemed a clichéd “romance versus cancer” trope. The selection of Iain Morris, a director best known for the British comedy series The Inbetweeners, appears to be a deliberate strategic choice to navigate this. His background suggests an attempt to infuse the story with tonal complexity, balancing the inherent gravity of the subject matter with observational humor. Morris himself has stated his hope that the film allows the audience “to run through all the emotions associated with the wonderful, noisy, chaotic, unexpected, funny, heart-breaking experience that is falling in love”.
Embodying the Dichotomy: On Character and Performance
The film is anchored by the performance of Sofia Carson as Anna De La Vega. A significant adaptive choice was made to change the protagonist’s name from the novel’s Ella Durran and to define the character as Hispanic, a move that aligns with Carson’s own heritage and adds a thoughtful touch of representation. This introduces a more complex matrix of social dynamics to the “American at Oxford” narrative, adding a potential layer of subtext to Anna’s ambition. To capture an authentic sense of wonder and displacement, Carson intentionally avoided visiting filming locations until cameras were rolling, aiming “to truly experience Oxford just as Anna would”. Opposite her, Corey Mylchreest, known for his role as a troubled romantic figure in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, portrays Jamie Davenport. The narrative hinges on the chemistry between these two leads. Director Iain Morris observed that they “bounced off each other from the first moment they worked together,” enjoying the challenge of making each other “laugh – and maybe cry?”. This dynamic is crucial for a relationship that must feel both intellectually vibrant and emotionally profound. The supporting ensemble, including veteran actors Dougray Scott and Catherine McCormack as Jamie’s parents, William and Antonia Davenport, and Harry Trevaldwyn as Anna’s friend Charlie Butler, serves to build out the film’s social world and provide context for the central couple’s journey.
The Grammar of Cinema: Crafting the World of Oxford
The film’s aesthetic ambitions are signaled by its high-caliber creative team, suggesting a conscious effort to elevate the material beyond the conventions of the streaming romance. The visual language is shaped by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Remi Adefarasin (Elizabeth, Me Before You). His philosophy of “heightened realism” is evident in the look of the film, which was shot on ARRI Alexa cameras with Cooke S4 prime lenses to capture the hallowed atmosphere of Oxford’s colleges—including Magdalen, St Hugh’s, and Hertford—without resorting to a desaturated or overly glossy filter. Adefarasin employs a classic cinematographic approach, favoring deliberate dolly movements over agitated handheld work and utilizing a naturalistic lighting scheme that avoids heavy saturation or multiple shadows. This grounds the story’s grand emotions in a tangible, believable world. The world-building is further defined by the production design of Catrin Meredydd, whose credits include the textured, psychologically astute environments of Broadchurch and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Her work contrasts the university’s ancient halls with the vibrancy of modern student life, using physical spaces to reflect the film’s thematic tensions. The most unconventional creative choice is the selection of Isabella Summers to compose the score. Best known as a key architect of the sound of Florence and the Machine, Summers brings an eclectic and experimental sensibility honed on complex dramas like Little Fires Everywhere and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Drawing from influences as varied as hip-hop, RZA, and classic James Bond scores, her compositional style often begins with samples and a focus on the “heartbeat of a song,” suggesting a sonic landscape far from a conventional romantic soundtrack. Her score likely functions as an emotional counterpoint, introducing a modern, perhaps melancholic and jagged, layer that complements the film’s sophisticated visual aesthetic.
Concluding Analysis
Ultimately, My Oxford Year presents itself as an exercise in genre elevation. It takes the familiar framework of a romantic drama and invests it with artistic gravitas through sophisticated direction and superior cinematic craft. The assembly of a prestige technical crew—from Adefarasin’s classical cinematography to Summers’ experimental score—and a nuanced directorial approach aim to deepen the emotional resonance of a story built on a well-established narrative trope. The film’s success will rest on its ability to harmonize these elements, determining whether its polished, atmospheric surface successfully enriches its conventional core or creates an unresolved dissonance. It stands as a notable entry in its distributor’s evolving content strategy, pointing toward a growing investment in more artistically ambitious genre filmmaking. The narrative, in its exploration of life’s brevity and the choices that define it, ultimately echoes a sentiment expressed by its lead actress: that the film “in every frame reaffirms the belief that life is too short to not live it in love. To not live it in joy”.
My Oxford Year premiered on Netflix on August 1, 2025.
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