Taylor Swift has dropped the short film to her ten-minute version of “All Too Well,†and, well, we’re not surprised that she handed out tissues at the premiere. Written and directed by Swift, the 35mm film features Dylan O’Brien as an older man who breaks Sadie Sink’s heart (the age difference is very close to the one Swift had with Jake Gyllenhaal). The couple falls apart across six labeled sections: an upstate escape, the first crack in the glass, the breaking point, the reeling, the remembering, and 13 years gone. We see many shots of the pair when they were happy — constantly kissing, taking a road trip together, dancing in low refrigerator light. But things take a turn when we get a moment of dialogue, when the music cuts out so we can hear O’Brien and Sink arguing over whether he treated her differently around his friends. He kisses her to end the argument. And then we start to see the many ways that he is not there for her when she needs him, right up until their breakup.
Eventually, a ginger Swift appears to portray an older version of Sink, who has turned the painful failed relationship into art as an author. O’Brien watches her at a book event from outside in the snow, his neck wrapped in the red scarf she once left at his sister’s house: “’Cause it reminds you of innocence / And it smells like me / You can’t get rid of it.†According to EW, she told fans at the premiere that their support for a song that was never ever released as a single changed its meaning for her. “It was about something very personal to me,†she said. “It was very hard to perform it live. Now for me, honestly, this song is 100 percent about us and for you.†All right, where are those tissues?