The Idea of You review – a sul­try unex­pect­ed­ly enter­tain­ing romance

If, like me, you were a par­tic­u­lar­ly lone­ly, book­ish and inter­net-savvy teenag­er, you may already be famil­iar with the con­cept of fan­fic­tion, in which keen fans pen their own sto­ries revolv­ing around the char­ac­ters, set­tings or gen­er­al lore of a cer­tain pop cul­ture arte­fact. Fan­fic­tion has been around for decades – in fact, some cool­er youth pas­tors might even refer to the Bible as fan­fic­tion – but the medi­um real­ly took off with the dawn of the inter­net, (Star Trek is wide­ly cred­it­ed with being a key­stone fan­dom) with web­sites like Fan​Fic​tion​.net, WattPad and AO3 becom­ing pop­u­lar hubs for writ­ers to share their work.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly fan­doms such as Har­ry Pot­ter and Lord of the Rings com­mand the biggest repos­i­to­ries of fan­works, with some as sprawl­ing and detailed as the IP that inspired them, but a more recent, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly pop­u­lar fan­dom is that of the boy­band One Direc­tion, who have inspired 297,000 fan­works on WattPad alone, despite their well-doc­u­ment­ed 2016 break-up. Many of these sto­ries, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, revolve around an orig­i­nal char­ac­ter meet­ing and falling in love with one of the 1D boys – Not­ting Hill for Zen­ni­al Gen­er­a­tion. Fan­fic­tion has proven a well­spring of inspi­ra­tion for Hol­ly­wood over the past decade, pre­sum­ably because with a few tweaks to avoid law­suits, it’s basi­cal­ly new IP.

While Robinne Lee’s nov­el ​‘The Idea of You’ has its roots in more tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing, it’s hard to deny the obvi­ous influ­ence of these online fan­tasies on its plot, which sees hot 40-year-old gal­lerist Solène Marc­hand (played in this glossy film adap­ta­tion by America’s sweet­heart Anne Hath­away) unex­pect­ed­ly meet and fall in love with a mem­ber of her daughter’s favourite boy­band, 24-year-old Hayes Camp­bell (Nicholas Gal­itzine, whose black dye job and fake tat­toos exac­er­bate the Har­ry Styles resemblance).

The age dif­fer­ence between Solène and Hayes is the most obvi­ous stick­ing point as they gen­tly explore a blos­som­ing romance, although the extent of his glob­al star­dom and the jeal­ousy of Solène’s ex-hus­band (a grumpy Reid Scott) add to their prob­lems. Solène’s teenage daugh­ter most­ly takes the whole sce­nario in stride; Hayes’ band­mates and their more age-appro­pri­ate bitchy girl­friends less so (though a scene where Solène feels inse­cure next to the troupe of boun­cy young mod­els rings some­what hol­low thanks to the cast­ing of the eter­nal­ly youth­ful and gor­geous Hathaway).

It’s clear that efforts have been made to make the romance as palat­able as pos­si­ble for a main­stream audi­ence – Hath­away is a very youth­ful 40, and Hayes is pre­sent­ed as wise beyond his 24 years, smit­ten with Solène not for her age but for her beau­ty and love of fine art. Hath­away and Gal­itzine have a pleas­ant chem­istry togeth­er, and while their romance might set tongues a‑wagging in the fic­tion­al world, it real­ly doesn’t feel that scan­dalous in the con­text of what reg­u­lar­ly turns up in the gos­sip pages.

Per­haps this is part of the point that Showal­ter and co-writer Jen­nifer West­feldt (who wrote and direct­ed the under­rat­ed Friends With Kids) are mak­ing, but The Idea of You is more inter­est­ed in Solène’s jour­ney through the unex­pect­ed romance, which comes at a cross­roads in her life. The film’s dreamy upper-crust Los Ange­les set­ting empha­sis­es the fan­ta­sy of it all, with Solène jet­ting off for secret trysts with Hayes in sul­try hotels, reclaim­ing the youth that she sac­ri­ficed to raise her daugh­ter. It’s not the most nov­el com­men­tary on gen­der, but it’s time­ly all the same.

The orig­i­nal songs per­formed by boy band August Moon – despite being penned by top pro­duc­er Savan Kotecha who pre­vi­ous­ly worked with One Direc­tion – are com­plete­ly dread­ful, and in its haste to clock in under two hours, the film for­goes a lot of the sex and fight­ing which made its source mate­r­i­al a best-sell­er. This does shave off some of the sharp­er edges, and give the audi­ence less to pon­der about the intri­ca­cies of Solène and Hayes’ rela­tion­ship, or indeed their char­ac­ters, whom are quite thin­ly sketched.

Despite these flaws, there is some­thing sweet about The Idea of You, even if it is a total fan­ta­sy. Per­haps it’s sim­ply the win­ning charm of Hath­away and Gal­itzine or the nov­el­ty of a rom-com fea­tur­ing a lead­ing lady over the age of 25. More of that, please!

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

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.