'My Oxford Year' Makes A Strong Case For That Once-In-A-Lifetime Kinda Romance

My Oxford Year is the kind of romantic film that doesn’t scream love—it murmurs it. It is like a poem scribbled in the margins of a well-read book. Based on Julia Whelan’s novel, the story follows Anna De La Vega, a whip-smart American scholar and rising political star, who lands a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. Her plan is clear: study poetry and then return to Goldman Sachs. But Oxford, with all its moody charm and whispering corridors, has its own plans. 

The moment she meets Jamie Davenport, a charismatic professor with a secret, her world begins to shift. In the beginning, it does not seem dramatic, but in the end, we see the soft pull of tidewater coaxing her away from the shore she thought she was anchored to. 

This movie, My Oxford Year, made me feel a romance, which is powerful, yet somewhere, emotional maturity is absent. Anna and Jamie don’t fall into each other in a rush of impulsive lust or over-the-top gestures. Their connection is soft at first, full of literary references, teasing debates, and the kind of banter that hides deeper longing. You can feel it. You can feel how their conversations stretch, linger, then slowly dip into intimacy. 

Their shared love for poetry, especially the melancholy beauty of John Keats, eating at Dimitri’s becomes a bonding ritual and a foretelling of their own fleeting romance. And when the inevitable emotional reveal arrives, we learn about Jamie’s terminal illness. It does not break the story, but deepens it. Instead of melodrama, we’re given stillness, a slow acceptance, and the choice to love someone despite the pain their goodbye will bring. 

Romance Measured In Presence

The film’s emotional arc feels like a love letter to impermanence. It doesn’t promise forever. Instead, it meditates on what it means to be fully present with someone, even when time is running out. Anna, who begins the film as someone chasing control and ambition, finds herself forced to loosen her grip on timelines, plans, and certainty. In Jamie, she meets someone who has already learned to live in the moment.

This was a lesson, more than romantic fulfilment, that shapes her character the most. Their relationship is portrayed with restraint and nuance. When Jamie says, “I didn’t want you to see me like this,” and Anna replies, “I wanted to see you like this,” it lands like a truth many of us spend years learning: that real love is not about perfection, but presence. 

Visually, My Oxford Year is a feast for lovers of romantic academia – like me. The visuals of Oxford as a dreamscape, glowing streetlamps after the rain, ivy-draped courtyards, libraries that hum with silence. It’s a city made for reflection, for yearning. 

The architecture and weather echo the film’s tone: melancholy, beautiful, and steeped in memory. Even when the narrative leans into familiar romantic tropes—chance meetings, literary flirtation, tragic illness—the setting elevates the experience. Oxford isn’t just a backdrop. It’s a character, one that seduces the viewer just as much as Jamie seduces Anna. 

If there’s a flaw in the film, it’s in its simplicity. My Oxford Year isn’t trying to be grand or revolutionary. It’s trying to be honest. The emotional truth of its central relationship is what carries it—and that truth is rendered with care, sincerity, and an aching kind of beauty. 

In the end, My Oxford Year doesn’t offer a perfect romance. What it offers is something rarer: a romance that understands the weight of goodbye. It shows us how love can be a chapter, not a whole book, and still change your life. That a year, a season, or even a handful of weeks can be enough to mark us forever. It’s a film for those who believe in the bittersweet magic of what could have been, for those who’ve loved deeply and lost, and for anyone who’s ever walked away with a heart both broken and more open than before.

Film review by Samriti Dhatwalia. Views expressed are the author's own.