Hello Beautiful (Hamzeh, 2025)

Given that Hello Beautiful‘s sole reason for being seems to be to induce sympathy for a woman with breast cancer, saying that it attempts to do absolutely nothing else feels like a criticism both too harsh and too gentle.

That woman is Willow Boutrous (Tricia Helfer), and she is (according to the title card) based on a true story even though Christine Handy calls Walk Beside Me a “fictional depiction” of her life.

The difficulties of a compressing a novel into a film are as varied as the novels being adapted, but Hello Beautiful runs head first at full speed into a few of them. The novel’s summary suggests that Willow has amazing friends that help her through a botched colon operation and a yoga injury leading to paralysis in one arm…before she is diagnosed with breast cancer. The film barely establishes her relationship to her husband, his family, and their daughter, before the diagnosis.

The way Willow reacts to her husband and extended family is consequently at odds with what little we see of them directly. We are told — Willow tells us by telling him — that her husband only values her for her looks. Is the disconnect between how he acts and what she says about him supposed to communicate her insecurity, a backstory the film assumes book readers know, or just sloppy characterization?

Once the film gets into the cancer treatments, the lack of foundation for the characters as people renders the horrors of cancer and chemotherapy almost entirely generic. It’s one thing when you find yourself comparing a film to another film that handles the same topic better. It’s another thing when half way through a film your list of films that handle the same material better — Wit, 50/50, The Fault is in Our Stars, Terms of Endearment, Stepmom — reaches a half dozen and you haven’t even consulted IMDB yet.

The secondary consequence of sacrificing characterization for chemotherapy is that third-act transformations end of coming across as Road to Damascus epiphanies rather than organic changes. A brusque nurse becomes gentle, a hostile step-daughter becomes supportive, and friends who have been largely absent show up in droves wielding pink umbrellas.

The film’s closing scene is so telegraphed and predictable that it comes across as exploitative rather than brave. Given that Willow is a model, one expects the issue of her self-worth being tied to physical appearance to be developed in a more sophisticated way than by simply having her make constant assertions that her husband doesn’t look at her the same way that he used to. On this theme, the film could even be accused of wanting to have its cake and eat it, too. Modeling, we are constantly told, is glamorous, something Willow feels proud of, and what makes her desirable. It’s allegedly what makes her cancer story more interesting and relevant than anyone else’s. Yet the film’s last act turns around and suggests that only post-disfigurement has she seen the possibility that she has value apart from beauty.

The film’s final line, which should be so easy to guess that it’s not worth spoiling, could almost be interpreted as saying the cancer, horrific as it was, leaves Willow in a better place than where she started. I can easily imagine that many people who endure horrific suffering find renewed strength and purpose in surviving. I’ve even witnessed that phenomenon in people close to me. I have a hard time imagining that those people would not feel ambivalent about a movie that is steeped in the suffering and includes the growth as an afterthought coda — that presents them less as fully realized human beings than as cancer incubators whose relevance is derived only from the extent of their suffering.

Postscript: I forgot to mention that the music is over-the-top bad. Violins and other string instruments with volume turned up to 11 just in case you don’t understand that a chemo victim shaving her head is thematically significant. That points to a larger problem mentioned above. Hello Beautiful acts like we have never seen a cancer story before, much less known anyone who has gone through similar experiences.