The story of Werther was an 18th-century megahit. Could I turn it into a contemporary rom-com?

Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This TIFF 2024 edition by director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço focuses on his film Young Werther.

Several years ago, I stared at the copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther on my bookshelf and wondered why there'd never been a major English-language adaptation of the 18th century's biggest hit. Goethe's tragic tale of romance, angst and unrequited love is one of the most famous European novels. Surely someone had already done it? And if someone hadn't, surely it'd be a snap to translate Werther into a contemporary feature-length dramedy?

It surely was not.

If you're unfamiliar with Werther (as I was before it was assigned reading in a class at university), it's more than just a cornerstone of Romantic literature — it was essentially the Beatles of 1774. When Werther was first published, The Youth went wild for it, and foppish teens and 20-somethings all across Europe started dressing like the titular protagonist by aping his signature blue frock coat and yellow vest. 

The novel was heavily merchandised, with items like Werther-themed perfumes and porcelain flying off the shelves at all the finest shops. It's been adapted into operas, plays, mangas, pastiches and films in several different languages. And legend has it Werther was Napoleon's favourite book — one he carried into battle, over his heart, to remind him of his own complicated love for Joséphine.

So, zero pressure. All I had to do was take a story that'd been continuously conquering Europe for 250 years and make it resonate with a modern audience. Simple. Easy. No sturm, no drang.

The story actually doesn't sound that complicated on its face. The novel centres on a young man, Werther, who falls madly in love with Charlotte, an unattainable woman who returns his attraction but is inconveniently engaged to another man. The three become close friends, and the book follows Werther's intense emotional journey as he spirals into despair, culminating in one of the most famous acts of self-destruction in literary history. It's beautiful, tragic and — as has been pointed out to me many, many times — not exactly the source material you might expect for romantic comedy.

But I always saw Werther as quite a funny character. He's passionate and self-centred, with wild swings between irrepressible enthusiasm and relentless melancholy. Strip off his velvet waistcoat and knee breeches, and you have a figure so fascinating and frustrating (and nude?) that he warrants interpretation in any era. 

The first hurdle in the process was tone. Goethe's Werther is often the embodiment of outright misery, and without watering down the story's essence, I didn't want the film to be a 90-minute soliloquy about despair. I did want to preserve its heart, though, by balancing Werther's emotional depth with the absurdity of being so deeply in love with the idea of love that you can't help but root for him (even as you cringe at the intensity of his all-consuming pursuit).

Then there was the issue of form. The original Werther is an epistolary novel, the narrative comprised almost entirely of manic letters Werther writes to his friend Wilhelm. It works brilliantly in print, but if you tried a modern version of constant letter-writing on screen — frame after frame of text bubbles or macro shots of emails typed — it just wouldn't sustain the dynamism a feature film requires.

So one of the first big creative choices I made was to turn Wilhelm into an onscreen character: Paul — Werther's impatient and long-suffering best friend, the pragmatic counterbalance to Werther's hummingbird volatility. Paul's presence as a visible character rather than an unseen pen pal maintains the intimate and confessional nature of the original letters, but also adds a dynamic layer to the narrative; their snappy, bickering dialogue is one of my favourite parts of the film.

Setting the story in present day was another challenge. In Goethe's era, pistol duels and arranged marriages were common; in 2024, less so. The barriers keeping Werther and Charlotte apart had to be reimagined in a way that felt organic to contemporary life. So Charlotte became a woman navigating the complexities of a stagnating relationship, one she chose for herself during a period of instability and profound grief. Technically attached, but emotionally available — and yet still out of reach in the ways that matter most.

The toughest aspect of the adaptation, though, was the ending. The novel's conclusion is bleak, arriving with shocking suddenness. Something that abrupt doesn't translate in a useful way for film pacing, though, and in a contemporary context, the content would come across as irresponsible if not handled with care.

That said, erasing the darkness that makes Werther's story so compelling seemed incorrect. The solution was to find a way to suggest Werther's journey of self-discovery, while heartbreaking and painful, ultimately leads him somewhere more hopeful — a recognition that perhaps what he'd been searching for in another person is something he could possibly one day find within himself.

Young Werther screens at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 5-15.