The Last Sunrise

Ry (Maia Reficco) is a college student with a chronic illness, hauled off to Mallorca by her mother Isolde (Eva Longoria) for what's pitched as a healing summer. She meets Julián (Fernando Lindez), a local charmer whose entire job description is "encourage her to live in the moment." Directed by Carlson Young, adapted from Anna Todd's 2025 novel — yes, the After author — this is a sun-drenched romance built on borrowed time, buried family stuff, and a lot of Vespa rides through Pollença and Valldemossa.

The postcard. Mallorca does 70% of the acting here, and the location team knew it — Palma alleys, cliff swims, golden-hour terraces, the whole travel-brochure package rendered with real money and a competent DP. Reficco has a natural, unfussy screen presence that keeps Ry from tipping into sick-girl cliché, and Lindez is genuinely charming in the mode the part requires. When the script actually hands Longoria a scene, she takes it, which is the closest thing the movie has to a pulse whenever it needs one. As a faithful book-to-screen for readers who came in loving the novel, it delivers what it promised.

There are no stakes. That's not a nitpick, it's the whole review. The illness is a mood, not a threat; the family secrets get teased and then wander off; the central relationship never earns a real obstacle. Young keeps introducing texture — mother-daughter friction, mortality, the ethics of loving someone on a clock — and then panic-cuts to another sunset before anything lands. Reviewers keep using the word "mediocre," and that's fair. Everything's competent. Nothing's alive. Reficco and Lindez have to conjure chemistry across dialogue that keeps handing them affirmations instead of scenes.

If you've read every Anna Todd book, you already have your ticket and you're going to have a fine time. If you liked The Light Between Us, All the Bright Places, or the softer end of the Nicholas Sparks catalog, this slots right in. If you want the emotional gut-punch of Me Before You or the specificity of Call Me by Your Name, you'll be checking your phone by minute forty. Anyone who requires tension in their romances — actual conflict, actual friction, an actual reason these two people can't just be together — is quitting before the second Mallorca montage.

BACKGROUND TV because that's what the movie is actually built to be. It's a pretty thing to have on while you fold laundry, text your sister, or half-listen from the kitchen. The direction is safe, the writing hedges every stake it sets up, and the emotional beats arrive on schedule without ever surprising anyone. Nothing's offensively bad; nothing's alive enough to demand your eyes. There's no sermon here to fail the Lecture Test — the movie's failure is quieter and more common. It confuses sincerity with substance, and mistakes a beautiful location for a reason to care. Put it on. Look up occasionally. You won't miss anything.