Some have dubbed it “the Harry Styles fan-fiction movie”, while others are already calling it the new Notting Hill.
The Idea of You, the latest film from The Big Sick director Michael Showalter centres around a passionate, if a little vanilla, age-gap relationship between a forty year old divorcee from LA and an internationally renowned boy-band singer in his early twenties.
Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada, The Princess Diaries, Love and Other Drugs) and Nicholas Galitzine (The Craft: Legacy, Red White and Royal Blue) are Solène and Haze, two star-crossed lovers who after a meet-cute at the Coachella music festival – she is there to chaperone her teenage daughter and her friends, while he is headlining the main stage – can’t seem to get enough of each other. But while Solene repeatedly rejects Haze’s advances invoking their 15 year age-gap, Haze is convinced that she is the woman for him and refuses to take no for an answer.
Much soul-searching ensues as the couple finally gets together secretly, only for the their relationship to be made public due to leaked paparazzi photos. This instantly results in a major scandal and a campaign of online bullying directed towards Solene and her daughter.
There isn’t much here that we haven’t seen done better and with more conviction before, but this is nevertheless a refreshingly sober and timely story that manages to advance the subject of reverse age-gap relationships, away from the usually internet toxicity.
Showalter and screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt deliver a fun and heart-warming tale of love, passion and eventual triumph over adversity. Hathaway is at her vulnerable best, something we haven’t seen from her for a while. Galitzine does his best here, even if he is ultimately let down by a fairly pedestrian screenplay that presents him as a one dimensional object of affection with little or no depth at all – but I guess that’s exactly the point.
This may not be the best romcom of the year, but it certainly is the most staunchly feminist representation of an age-gap love affair any of us are likely to come across. I dare anyone not to be swept up in its sunny, optimistic outlook. This is a film that doesn’t give a damn about the male gaze, and I am here for it.
