Why Imag­ine Me & You deserves to be remem­bered as a queer rom-com classic

The rom-com is an impor­tant and under­rat­ed genre of film – where else can an audi­ence find com­e­dy, hap­pi­ness, angst, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and a love sto­ry that will always have a hap­py end­ing? It’s this guar­an­teed pos­i­tive out­come that makes LGBTQ+ rom-coms so impor­tant and a refresh­ing change from queer media marred in sad­ness (and often death). With an LGBTQ+ rom-com, the audi­ence knows that for once they won’t be fin­ish­ing the film feel­ing mis­er­able or upset instead of hope­ful and delighted.

Com­pared to het­ero­sex­u­al rom-coms, there aren’t near­ly enough films that cen­tre LGBTQ+ char­ac­ters, but there are def­i­nite­ly some worth spot­light­ing – such as Ol Parker’s 2006 British title Imag­ine Me & You.

Piper Per­abo stars as Rachel, who locks eyes with Lena Heady’s Luce at her wed­ding and is instant­ly drawn to her. Luce is gay and owns a flower shop – she’s the florist hired to help with Rachel’s wed­ding to her long­time boyfriend, Heck (Matthew Goode). She and Rachel instant­ly hit it off, and become fast friends. 

Despite a seem­ing­ly hap­py mar­riage to Heck, Rachel becomes clos­er and clos­er to Luce. When the two become more than friends, she starts to ques­tion her sex­u­al­i­ty and soon has to make the dif­fi­cult deci­sion between the man she’s always loved, or this instant con­nec­tion that might just mean that love at first sight real­ly does exist.

Imag­ine Me & You is a beau­ti­ful film, full of long­ing looks between Luce and Rachel – it’s also a quin­tes­sen­tial quaint British rom-com (think Not­ting Hill) which makes the fact that it cen­tres a les­bian romance par­tic­u­lar­ly refresh­ing since British rom-coms rarely focus on non-het­ero­nor­ma­tive rela­tion­ships (and we need more gay British rom-coms, please, and thank you!) 

It’s also hilar­i­ous, with some quotable lines (Luce’s friend Edie’s infa­mous response to being asked if she’s gay – ​“Am I gay? I’m ecsta­t­ic!” springs to mind). Rachel’s fam­i­ly, with her charm­ing­ly bum­bling dad played by Antho­ny Head, and her over­bear­ing but lov­ing mum played by Celia Imrie, also pro­vide moments of com­e­dy, such as when find­ing out that Rachel is inter­est­ed in Luce, Rachel’s mum, try­ing to process this, asks if they are ​“les­bi-friends.”

Cru­cial­ly, it’s a film that’s full of noth­ing but joy. While there’s some angst and sad­ness thrown in, there’s a won­der­ful hap­py end­ing for all char­ac­ters, but espe­cial­ly for Luce and Rachel, mak­ing it a great addi­tion to the LGBTQ+ rom-com canon.

Despite being a sweet and worth­while rom-com, Imag­ine Me and You def­i­nite­ly isn’t per­fect. It includes a cou­ple of dam­ag­ing tropes, name­ly that Rachel cheats on her hus­band, Heck, to be with Luce. This is a preva­lent plot device in media, includ­ing LGBTQ+ romances, which fur­thers the harm­ful stereo­type that LGBTQ+ peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are bisex­u­al or pan­sex­u­al (although Rachel nev­er labels her sex­u­al­i­ty in the film), cheat on their partners.

Then there’s Heck’s friend, Coop, played by Dar­ren Boyd. He’s a ​“wom­an­is­er” who imme­di­ate­ly starts to pur­sue Luce. He makes a few les­bo­pho­bic remarks through­out the film, and while he does end up being an unlike­ly alliance for Luce when he finds out he hasn’t got a chance with her, their friend­ship is over­shad­owed at times by his atti­tude. His hap­py end­ing is the sud­den reveal that he now has a baby daugh­ter. It feels like Bar­ney Stinson’s end­ing in TV sit­com How I Met Your Moth­er – the phi­lan­der­er is redeemed by hav­ing a daugh­ter of his own.. He’s played well by Boyd, but his addi­tion to this queer rom-com does reduce its impact as rep­re­sen­ta­tion in parts, giv­en some of the reduc­tive com­ments that he makes. While being a great film and key LGBTQ+ rom-com over­all, Imag­ine Me and You is unde­ni­ably dat­ed, giv­en the fact that it came out 16 years ago. 

Thank­ful­ly there are more mod­ern addi­tions to the canon that don’t fall into using these reduc­tive tropes and are great pieces of media and LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in their own right. Heart­stop­per, the pop­u­lar TV series based on Alice Oseman’s graph­ic nov­els of the same name, broke records when it land­ed on Variety’s Trend­ing TV list for five con­sec­u­tive weeks. A love sto­ry between teenage school­boys Char­lie and Nick, it’s also already been renewed for two more series by Net­flix. There’s also Fire Island, a mod­ern gay rom-com about a group of friends on hol­i­day, inspired by Jane Austin’s ​‘Pride and Prej­u­dice,’ and Crush, a com­ing-of-age les­bian rom-com about a school­girl who joins a sports team to get clos­er to her crush, only to end up clos­er to anoth­er teammate. 

It’s incred­i­ble to see more and more tele­vi­sion shows and films added to the LGBTQ+ rom-com canon, build­ing on the lega­cy of media like Imag­ine Me and You, result­ing in even bet­ter and more impact­ful sto­ries. Hope­ful­ly, they keep on com­ing – every­one deserves to smile, weep, laugh, and ulti­mate­ly enjoy a love sto­ry that includes peo­ple like them get­ting their hap­py end­ing after all.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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