Since 1995, Vanity Fair has released an annual gatefold cover spotlighting hot new stars (with occasional breaks for covers featuring "legends" or Barack Obama). This is a risky game: the 1995 cover featured Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Julianne Moore, while the 2000 cover included Wes Bentley and Chris Klein.

This year's cover, released this morning, includes 11 stars lounging in a vaguely boudoir-ish setting; many of them were not especially recognizable to begin with (that's rather the point), but they're made up to look even less so! Herewith, a forecasting of the futures of these bright young stars (some of whom we've seen on this cover in past years), measured by stars featured on past Hollywood Issue covers.

Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo):

Best-case scenario: Natalie Portman

Worst-case scenario: Noomi Rapace

Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games):

Best-case scenario: Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games)

Worst-case scenario: Jennifer Lawrence (The Beaver)

Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre):

Best-case scenario: Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre)

Worst-case scenario: Mia Wasikowska (Albert Nobbs)

Jessica Chastain (The Help, etc.):

Best-case scenario: Julianne Moore

Worst-case scenario: Claire Forlani

Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene):

Best-case scenario: Carey Mulligan

Worst-case scenario: Alison Lohman

Adepero Oduye (Pariah)

Best-case scenario: Angela Bassett

Worst-case scenario: Rosario Dawson

Shailene Woodley (The Descendants)

Best-case scenario: Emma Stone

Worst-case scenario: Selma Blair

Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol)

Best-case scenario: Salma Hayek

Worst-case scenario: Jessica Biel

Felicity Jones (Like Crazy)

Best-case scenario: Cate Blanchett

Worst-case scenario: Minnie Driver

Lily Collins (Mirror, Mirror)

Best-case scenario: Kate Hudson

Worst-case scenario: Monica Potter

Brit Marling (Another Earth)

Best-case scenario: Chloe Sevigny

Worst-case scenario: Leelee Sobieski

Jones and Yelchin.

Like Crazy is an endearing film about intelligent young people (what a relief) and the resilience it takes for their love to overcome geography. Anna (enchanting Felicity Jones) is a British college student with the most beguiling eyes since Jean Simmons’s, earning credits for a series of writing courses in California. Jacob (Anton Yelchin) studies furniture design and lives with his widowed mom. They’re both only children who find in each other the humor, caring, togetherness and sense of belonging they never had before. Refreshingly languid in giving the two students time to think and grow and get to know each other, the film moves into their hearts and so will you.

When the semester ends, she must reluctantly return to England to renew her visa so she can qualify for the fall term. He gives her a gold bracelet with the word “Patience” engraved on it. Overwhelmed with emotion, she stays, violating her visa, so when the time comes to return to Los Angeles, her entry visa and passport are denied by U.S. immigration and she is forcibly sent back to London without leaving the airport. Separated by miles as well as red tape, their love is reduced to emails and cell phones. He moves on with his furniture, she gets a job with a British magazine, but the luster does not tarnish. No matter how hard they try to be mature and impassive, telling themselves that love is only love, they have bonded on the purest level. Life is never really the same for either of them. Jacob saves enough money to visit her, but making love in her rented flat, seeing the sights together, and then saying bittersweet goodbyes makes things only worse. Back home, he tries a radical approach, tossing her mail and erasing her text messages. He even falls for another girl (Jennifer Lawrence, from Winter’s Bone) while in London; Anna starts a relationship with a handsome neighbor. Nothing works. They can’t prune away their emotional attachment like a surgical procedure. She’s lonely and expressive. He’s a sensitive man in the body of a boy. Both of them are inexperienced but seasoned beyond their years. Marriage is proposed, but since she abused her travel permit, neither British immigration nor the U.S. Embassy will process their application for a marriage visa to enter the U.S. He stays in England, jeopardizing his career. The visa finally comes through and they are together again, but the resolutions to the problems raised by the changes in their lives are yet to come. Will the emotional wedge between them widen? Can they ever feel the same after living a little, making sacrifices to their own ideals, and breaking a few hearts along the way (including their own)? Director-writer Drake Doremus is a talent to watch—restrained, economical, breezy—with an uncanny ability to make familiar themes seem originally observed. He has a wonderful way with actors, his settings looked lived in, the words in his screenplay (co-written with Ben York Jones) sound real and true. He’s a master of nuance. I’m told he kept the ending under wraps, even from the actors, until the first edit. The looks on their faces mirror myriad feelings, all of them exciting to observe. Unlike most alleged Hollywood rom-coms, Like Crazy is delicate, uplifting and definitely worth investigating.

rreed@observer.com

LIKE CRAZY

Running Time 90 minutes

Written by Drake Doremus

Directed by Drake Doremus

Starring Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence

3/4