(courtesy IMP Awards)
In the romantically unreal world of romance-cons, it’s rare to come across an emotion that feels even halfway authentic.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing in this much-loved genre; after all, we pay to see these movies for just these escapist qualities, ripe with the ability to take us away from the disappointments and exhausting reality of the everyday.
Still, some link to the real world is welcome even in a genre as unmoored from the vicissitudes of the world as this one, because it makes us feel that maybe even a scenario as unlikely as this one, no matter how gloriously and welcomingly far-fetched, might one day play out for real.
The good news is that The Idea of You, one of the most recent entrants in a very crowded field of romantically aspirational viewing, is that it is full to happiness-inducing bursting with real emotions and acknowledgement of the complications of a world inured to happy-ever-afters for the most part, while stoking those fairytale rom-com fires we love to see burn high and passionately.
Somehow, The Idea of You, directed by Michael Showalter to a screenplay he co-wrote with by Jennifer Westfeldt, intern based on the book of the same name by Robinne Lee, manages that most miraculous of rom-com landings – it’s unflinching honest about love’s chances in the big, unromantic wastes of the real world, especially when it involves (still, absurdly) what mainstream society views as an unpalatable pairing, but also breathlessly hopeful about love’s capacity to prevail when a considerable amount of odds are stacked against it.
The unlikely pairing is between soon-to-be 40-year-old modern art gallery owner and divorced single mum, Solène Marchand (Anna Hathaway), who lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and 24-year-old boy band (August Moon) pop star Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) who end up falling hard for each other when the most contrived of circumstances (but, it must be said, wholly possible in a rom-com where, thankfully, reality doesn’t hold as much sway as it does normally) bring them together.
Called upon to take her 16-year-old daughter Izzy (Ella Rubin) to a VIP all-access August Moon fan event at Coachella when her corporate workaholic dad and Solène’s cheating ex, Daniel (Reid Scott) pikes out at the last minute, Solène mistakes Hayes’ trailer as the VIP all-access public toilet and the weirdest but sweetly awkward of meet-cutes take place.
While there’s obviously a connection, Solène all but dismisses it immediately, more concerned with ensuring Izzy has a good time, and the two part, unlikely ships passing in the night that will likely never connect again.
But of course, The Idea of You is fairytale love in action, and so Hayes and Solène do meet again courtesy of the former’s ability to take a few pieces of scattered information in a conversation interrupted countless times and turn them into a connection that, despite Solène’s profoundly multitudinous objections, actually looks it might have legs.
Most lesser rom-coms would, at this point, be happy to leave everything in the thoroughly swoon-worthy land of land wholly and completely against the odds, the travails and complications of the real world be damned, but The Idea of You is not slumming in that tier of throwaway romance and so it begins to thoughtfully and intelligently examine what such a romance might look like when viewed from all kinds of critical angles.
Snug within their bubble of blissful love, it would be easy for Hayes and Solène to pretend they have got away with the impossible – in a world still sadly too often ruled by misogyny and the dead hand of patriarchy, it’s fine for a man to date a younger woman but strangely bizarre, and unacceptable, if the opposite should happen – but this is not a rom-com to simply let happiness get off untroubled and without challenge.
In short order, the happy couple receive disdain and contempt through the media and a dizzying array of toxically opinionated social media platforms, from the shallow, cruel hangers-on and groupies on August Moon’s world-bestriding tour, and even from Solène’s ex Daniel who hypocritically sets himself up, rather belatedly, as some strange paragon of moral virtue (the scene where Solène volubly unseats off his undeserving high horse is a gem of plain speaking and soul-freeing honesty in a film not afraid to say what needs to be said).
It is the rockiest of rocky roads and the happy and then not-so-happy couple end up with a huge amount to contend with and to the credit of the writers of The Idea of You, they don’t necessarily get the happy landing you may be expecting.
At least, not at first.
In fact, and honestly it gives so much emotional heft and heartfelt honesty that while you might mourn the loss of an tarnished fairytale setting, you’ll be glad in the long-run that here is one rom-com happen to lay all the dark and uncomfortable cards on the table and say that “sure you can your grand, society-defying love story but that it will come at a great cost … and do you want to be the ones to pay it?
This willingness to be both creator and executioner, at least temporarily of a breathlessly lovely romantic dream grants The Idea of You so much storytelling and impact that it is elevated to that top tier of rom-coms that admit that love has its hands full besting life and that sometimes it doesn’t win at all, or at least, quite as quickly as we might want it to.
Surely that’s a few dams too many worth of torrential rain showers on one giddily happy parade of unconditional love?
You might so at times, but The Idea of You finds a way to be brutally honest and harsh while also admitting that love, the actual real love-of-your-life kind that wades deep into the trenches of reality, stares the dark truths of life in the face and somehow emerges triumphant, might actually be able to win out in the end and that all obstacles, challenges, and bigotry-laden stupidity be damned, will fall by the way side in exultant happiness-elevating fashion and that happy-ever-after ending that the small-minded think shouldn’t happen will spring forth and make the world a better place, at least for two people who deserve, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be together.