Age of romance
Well-matched pair add depth and sizzle in this adaptation
Aclassic beach read that was everywhere for several summers last decade, Robinne Lee’s book The Idea Of You is framed around a premise that immediately provokes intense curiosity. The inevitable movie version does not go messing with what has already been proven as a winning formula.
Nevertheless, this appealing and accessible adaptation adds some real emotional depth and genuine sizzle that the book did not possess.
The conceptual hook cast forth by The Idea Of You remains as irresistible as ever.
Solene (Anne Hathaway) has just turned 40. With a failed marriage still getting on her nerves, a teenage daughter to raise and a busy art gallery to run, there are no signs on Solene’s life radar of an impending romance. Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) is 24. He is the lead singer of August Moon, one of the biggest boy bands on the planet. His day-today existence is just as busily blockedout as Solene’s. In some ways, even more so. Building a relationship just does not seem possible.
A chance meeting at the Coachella music festival changes everything we thought we knew about these two. Not instantly. But rather, slowly and surely. And carefully and warily, too.
While there is a definite connection that will bring Solene and Hayes together, there is a number continually coming up that threatens to both unfairly define and damn them.
To arrive at that number, all you have to do is subtract his age from hers.
It seems as if everyone in the world – particularly those many millions of angry August Moon fans – can’t help but do the math, and become totally obsessed by it.
Though The Idea Of You bears all the trappings of a conventional romcom – and a very enjoyable one, too – it does not seek to make light of the relationship at its centre, nor the unfair weight that is being shouldered by Solene in particular.
The filmmakers do not shirk from showing the sheer hypocrisy that is guaranteed to surface when a woman of a certain age takes a younger lover. She will pay a price for her choice that a man of that same certain age will not.
Just as the movie earns respect from the viewer in all the right ways, the well-matched screen pairing of Hathaway and Galitzine does not result in a single awkward or incongruous moment.
These two flawlessly fit the bill as a couple: you can clearly sense the pleasure they find in each other’s company, and the anguish they experience in having to hide away or explain away that pleasure over and over again.