They say that you cannot learn much from watching movies, but I beg to differ.  That might be wishful thinking on my part, seeking to justify my existence for the past six years.  Still, a stray fact or two sometimes comes across my consciousness while viewing cinema.  Take Australia, for example.  Did you know the largest Christian denomination on the island nation is Catholicism?  However, you would not know this from seeing any movies set in the country.  The instances in which I have witnessed this are rare.  You would not find out any of this from putting on You, Always (2025), but I did discover that they refer to the globe-spanning fast food chain McDonald’s as “Macca.”

There is no clever or nice way of transitioning from last sentence into the beginning of You, Always, which is a person’s bare bottom.  The owner of this posterior is in the local physician’s office of Dr. Jen Bell (Jessica De Gouw), who treats the whimsical residents of the small, seaside Australian town in which she lives.  Once this patient’s situation is settled, it is off to her second job as a part-time water rescue first responder.  Please forgive the clunky expression and blame it on the land down under.  In this capacity, she gets to work with Ethan (Adrian Grenier), her American best friend since high school.  As they bring a distressed swimmer to safety, having performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), their conversation conveniently gives all the backstory you need.  In brief, he had come to the South Pacific to be with his dying father after a career in the military, staying on to fill his current position full time.  They have each been divorced, which only strengthens their bond over the years.  Indeed, they are so close that she trusts him to pick up her daughter, Sophia Bell (Aria Burton), from the girl’s friend’s house.  Ethan volunteers to do so in order for Dr. Bell to get some needed rest.  Hence, once she gets home and cleans up the place, she still has time while Ethan and Sophia get Macca’s burgers to delve into a romance novel by her favorite author, Patrick Lee Taylor (Desmond Chiam).  Once Ethan and Sophia return, he complains of a painful shoulder, and Dr. Bell has him partially remove his shirt to examine him.  Perhaps it is the book she had been consuming, but them touching in this manner has her being more attracted to him at any other point in their lives.  To that end, she offers to cook him dinner, ostensibly to thank him for transporting Sophia.  He happily agrees, though his response is far more casual.  With that, it should not be shocking that he stands her up, and is perplexed as to why she would be upset when she finds him at home playing video games.  Putting the ordeal out of mind by having a picnic on the beach with Sophia, you should also not be surprised that it is here that Dr. Bell runs into Patrick.  There is an instant attraction between the author and the doctor, though it also helps that she nervously gushes over meeting him.  Brushing aside her nervousness, they start dating.  It takes Ethan a few days to realize what is going on, mainly because she has not been showing up for shifts with the marine rescue.  At length, he understands that he had made a mistake.  Buying some food by way of apology, he drives to her house and finds her with Patrick.  He makes an awkward retreat, and is puzzled for a few days afterwards.  He is still pondering the development when he is called to save a swimmer clinging to buoy in the bay.  This turns out to be Matilda (Yasmin Kassim), who is more than happy to hitch a wave runner ride with her rescuer, later asking him if he would like to go to dinner.  The time and place they pick for the occasion also happens to be when and where Dr. Bell and Patrick are having an intimate meal.  Because of their proximity, much of Dr. Bell and Ethan’s attention is on one another.  Their attempt at trying to make it less strange fails, and it worsens when he mistakenly sees her being proposed to by Patrick.  It becomes aggressive when the pair of couples end up at the same beach party, with the men turning ultracompetitive over a silly game.  Over the next few days, the news of the engagement begins to be revealed to a number of people, but it comes with Patrick wanting Dr. Bell and Sophia to move to Sydney with him.  She has some misgivings about this aspect, but Sophia’s eagerness to attend a special school there convinces Dr. Bell.  It is as she is beginning the process of packing that Ethan comes to her house and tries to convince her to stay, being so bold as to kiss her.  She responds by saying that he had his chance, and that he needs to take steps to live a better life.  He leaves, sadly, saying “I love you” through the closed door.  Dr. Bell carries on with her preparations, but Ethan decides to start applying himself in his career as she had always wanted.  Thus, on the eve of her departure, while attending one last marine rescue meeting, she finds out that he has been made captain.  Between that and the fact that he did not continue going out with Matilda, Dr. Bell decides to remain in her small town.  It is not long before Dr. Bell and Ethan are married in a seaside ceremony.

As with most of these romantic comedies, the wedding at the end of You, Always is expected from the moment you see Dr. Bell and Ethan together.  Everything else is filler until you get to that point.  As a Catholic watching this, I could quibble about the setting for their nuptials.  In order to have a sacramental marriage, the ceremony needs to take place in a church before God’s presence in the tabernacle.  While there is not much depth to this story, focusing on this aspect would be just as thin of an approach as the plot.  Instead, a meatier analysis involves looking at the woundedness experienced by Dr. Bell and Ethan.  The difference between them is that she decided to do something about being divorced and a single mother, while he never got over being separated from his wife and became a beach bum.  In Christian terms, Ethan is wallowing in his past.  It is not a healthy way of handling trauma, mentally or spiritually.  The enemy wants us to remain fixated on our hurt, or even better, make decisions for our lives that keep us from ever healing and cut us off from true love.  Despite the movie not putting this in a Catholic perspective, it does ask the question as to who knows what is best for ourselves.  Dr. Bell turns outward, which is what we should do, even if it is to self-help books and a medical education.  Ethan admits to being reticent to get into another relationship, choosing to avoid intimacy in order keep things emotionally safe.  He is determining what is best for himself instead of turning to a higher power like God.

I should not say “like God” despite there being nothing like Him in You, Always.  It is as standard as these movies go, and the Australian angle is more of a curiosity than a plot point.  Either way, you have already seen this movie.