'The Idea of You' Is Premium Grade Fanfic

Original source (on modern site) | Article images: [1]

Forget comic books and old TV shows. The most fecund I.P. these days might be Harry Styles fan fiction, which inspired the sleeper-success After franchise (which includes a film called After Ever Happy, a title that would make even Lewis Carroll scratch his head) and now The Idea of You, a romantic drama based on the novel by Robinne Lee (Amazon Prime Video, May 2). To be fair, Lee has said that the dashing young pop-star swain at the center of her story is an amalgam of many British idols. But the Styles of it all really jumps out.

Hayes Campbell is the tattooed breakout star of a boyband beloved, both sincerely and ironically, by legions of young fans. He is about to embark on a solo career, in which he will get more artful and serious. He likes to date older women. In Michael Showalter's film, Hayes is played by Nicholas Galitzine, the Brit hunk who recently made hearts flutter in the gay rich-boy romance Red, White & Royal Blue. Galitzine does not have Styles's same sly-fox bearing, but he'll certainly do in a pinch.

He's charming enough to easily ensnare 40-year-old Solène (Anne Hathaway), a Los Angeles gallery owner who has a chance encounter with Hayes while escorting her daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), to Coachella. Solène mistakes Hayes's trailer for the VIP restroom, they meet cute, and a whirlwind romance ensues.

This is happily silly stuff, and yet to the great credit of Showalter and his co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt, it's all taken pretty seriously. There is some com to go along with the rom, but this is, for the most part, a poignant story of a taboo love affair's rises and falls. Stylishly shot (by Jim Frohna) and scored (by Siddhartha Khosla), The Idea of You has an insistent pull. It's alluring and rousing in all the right ways; it indulges and complicates fantasy.

Hathaway is poised and gathered even when she is losing herself to erotic ecstasy. There's a proper adultness about her, which is necessary to the whole conceit. Were Solène some flustered movie creation, reacting to these strange circumstances in all the predictable self-consciously antic ways, the movie would spin out into absurdity. But Hathaway holds it down, selling us on each of Solène's choices as she tries to be practical about being reckless.

There could be more fleshing out of the time between a private first kiss (a disarmingly quiet scene that yields loud results) and a public fling. There would probably be more hesitation, more negotiation than we see in the film. But Showalter is too intent on sweeping us away to get bogged down in pesky exposition. Hayes, 24 and clever and kind, is more squeaky-clean than any real-life counterpoint would likely be, which may be an evasive bit of movie magic. Or, one might choose to buy that this lonely guy is as decent as he is—there's even some dialogue to bolster the argument.