Amazon Content Services LLC Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine play love at first sight in “The Idea of Being With You.”
Amazon Content Services LLC
Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine play love at first sight in “The Idea of Being With You.”
MOVIES – Featuring an Oscar-winning actress, a fictional band and plenty of sensual scenes, The idea of being with you promises to be the romantic comedy of spring. The film starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, directed by Michael Showalter, is released on Prime Video this Thursday, May 2.
The American actress plays Solène, a divorced forty-year-old, mother of a sixteen-year-old girl and owner of an art gallery in Los Angeles. While accompanying her daughter and her friends to the Coachella festival, she meets Hayes Campbell, the leader of the fashionable boy band, mistaking his dressing room for the toilets.
The 24-year-old singer, played by Nicholas Galitzine, immediately falls under the spell. He dedicates a song to her on stage, then buys all the works in her gallery to get a meeting with her. And it works.
All the elements of a romantic comedy are there: attractive actors with real on-screen chemistry, a pop soundtrack and montages that summarize weeks of love in a minute.
Harry Styles fan fiction?
The idea of being with you is the adaptation of the eponymous book by Robinne Lee. Released in 2017, it enjoyed renewed success during the Covid pandemic and was quickly cataloged on TikTok as Harry Styles fan fiction. Although she admitted to having been inspired by the singer, after coming across a One Direction video, the author told Vogue in 2020 that “this is not supposed to be a book about Harry Styles” but rather “the story of a woman who is approaching forty and who reclaims her sexuality and rediscovers herself”.
Alisha Wetherill / Alisha Wetherill/Prime August Moon, the fictional band in “The Idea of Being With You”, is an almost identical copy of One Direction.
Alisha Wetherill / Alisha Wetherill/Prime
August Moon, the fictional band in “The Idea of Being With You”, is an almost identical copy of One Direction.
The film adaptation is completely on the fan fiction side. Just like Harry Styles, Hayes Campbell is British, frontman of a five-member boy band and when he’s not on stage dressed all in black, he wears wool vests. Even the fake tattoos drawn on actor Nicholas Galitzine’s arms are very similar to those of the former One Direction singer. The production of the film plays on the nostalgia of the group’s fans, going so far as to recreate identical photo shoots to promote the fictional boy band, August Moon.
The love story between the idol of young girls and an older woman is reminiscent of Harry Styles’ past, and highly publicized, relationships. When he was 17, he was in a relationship with the presenter of X Factor, the late Caroline Flack, who was 31 at the time. And between the release of the book in 2017, and its adaptation on Prime Video, his romance with actress and director Olivia Wilde, ten years his senior, made the front pages of all the tabloids.
The end of the film buries the slightest doubt as to the director’s inspiration. In a five-year time jump, we discover Hayes Campbell in a late-night show, where he performs alone his new emotional song. We’re no longer sure if we’re watching a film or Harry Styles’ first solo performance with Sign of the times on the set of SNL.
“The idea of being with you” misses its point
But it’s not the resemblance to the star that prevents this rom com from revealing its full potential. The first half of the film about the beginning of their romance works quite well. It’s when the problems arrive that the film reaches its limits.
Amazon Content Services LLC The most improbable thing about “The Idea of Being With You” is not that a forty-year-old woman is going out with a younger man, but that she is dropping everything to follow him on tour.
Amazon Content Services LLC
The most improbable thing in “The Idea of Being With You” is not that a forty-year-old woman goes out with a younger man, but that she drops everything to follow him on tour.
Throughout the film’s promotion, Anne Hathaway and the rest of the cast sold The idea of being with you like an anti-ageism rom com, in which a forty-year-old frees herself from all prejudices to be with the one she loves. In an interview with Business Insiderthe actress said she doesn’t understand why there aren’t more films about women who are comfortable with their sexuality and thriving in their 40s. “I have many friends like Solène – not just 40-year-old women – who need to get over a broken heart and accept love. The idea of being able to portray someone who has the strength to choose their own heart over the world‘s disapproval seemed really special to me.”she added.
Except that the real obstacle in the relationship between Solène and Hayes is not their age difference, but the latter’s fame, and the consequences on their private lives. The chemistry between Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway very quickly makes you forget the years that separate them. Solène is often the only one to call them back, like during their first kiss, where she wants to point out that she could be his mother, while the young singer doesn’t care.
Anne Hathaway, star des rom coms
And even more, the only scene where she appears really self-conscious about her age falls apart: after comparing herself to students in bikinis, she decides to cover herself from head to toe by the pool. The sequence would have been stronger if Anne Hathaway was not considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, and if the film did not highlight her physique in other scenes.
The idea of being with you is therefore above all a story of romance with a celebrity. The twists and turns have more to do with the paparazzi and the tabloids than with real ageism. If Solène had met young Hayes at the supermarket, and not at Coachella, and he was in college rather than in a boy band, the film could have focused more on their age difference.
By refusing to choose between fan fiction and coming-of-age at forty, The idea of being with you therefore attempts to please both young fans of Harry Styles and older viewers, eager to see themselves represented on screen. The film above all confirms that Anne Hathaway excels in the rom com genre. And this, at any age.
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