A movie that features love-at-first-sight – or perhaps flirt at first sight – between two attractive leads, is that much more extraordinary when the couple enjoys luxurious dates around the world.
When the two become jet-setters, chased by paparazzi and stay in presidential suites in dreamy locales, it’s a made-for-Hollywood fairy tale romance.
Anne Hathaway stars as Solène, alongside Nicholas Galitzine (Hayes Campbell), in the upcoming Amazon Original, The Idea of You that streams as of May 1. The story begins when Solène, a 40-year-old single mother, is chaperoning her teenage daughter’s trip to Coachella, and buds an unexpected love affair with twenty-something Campbell, the British lead singer of popular boy band August Moon.
“It’s a wonderful movie about love, trust, intimacy, pleasure, and fun, silliness, and music. There are fun concert sequences, great clothes, and an abundance of British charm,” Hathaway told SWAGGER, of the film she also produced. Those are a lot of dabs on the marketing Bingo card, admittedly. But if any of those notes don’t land for the film viewer, and invariably that might be the case, Hathaway’s skill as an actress means that she can draw us in with her character, despite lulls in narrative.
She said of Solène: “I thought she was so sweet with a sharp sense of humor. I thought that was a really incredible combo. I loved the stage of life she’s at, where she’s experienced a really bad trauma to her trust and she’s right at that place where she could become bitter, and kind of negative about love, and then the most unexpected thing happens to her – she finds someone unexpectedly, she wasn’t looking. Then, she discovers kind of a new gear at a stage in her life where she’s told she’s going to disappear. That felt very cool to me.”
Galitzine, sitting next to Hathaway in the interview, chimed in that he felt a “chemistry and spark on the page.”
Reid Scott, who plays Daniel, the recent ex-husband and the foil, adds a layer of complexity to the story, as does 23-year-old Ella Rubin, who plays their daughter, Izzy. Everything is turned topsy-turvy when celebrity life meets family life.
The film has a Notting Hill feel to it, so far as the 1999 comedy-romance with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant feature a famous American actress and ordinary Brit falling in love. In The Idea of You, swap out the gender of the celebrity, and add a generational age gap. Swap out the Grant character’s book store, with Solène’s art gallery –as a MacGuffin, a set piece used as an excuse to light the sparks of infatuation. There are fewer laughs in Hathaway’s film, but not to its fault; we’re not expecting clever bon mots, a sardonic neighbour, or goofy accidents in what is otherwise built as a meet-cute charming love story.
“I just love the idea of these two people, the idea that it’s the last thing either of them expect, but they become the one thing each other needs. I thought that was really beautiful,” Hathaway said in the interview.
Hathaway’s Hollywood breakthrough came in 2001 with the Disney film “The Princess Diaries,” where she played Mia Thermopolis, a shy teenager who discovers she is the heir to a European throne. This role catapulted her into the spotlight and established her as a leading actress in Hollywood. Hathaway’s career is marked by a blend of commercial successes and critically acclaimed performances. She showcased her range by taking on roles in films like “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), and “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), a comedy-drama set in the fashion industry, where she starred opposite Meryl Streep.
Her performance in “Rachel Getting Married” (2008) earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. One of Hathaway’s most notable roles came in 2012 when she played Fantine in the film adaptation of “Les Misérables” for which she earned the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The 41-year-old has continued to take on a variety of roles in films such as “Interstellar” (2014), “The Intern” (2015), and “Ocean’s 8” (2018), showcasing her ability to adapt to different genres, from science fiction to comedy and heist films.
As for The Idea of You, it leaves us pondering what precisely is the “idea” with the two characters, Solène and Hayes? Perhaps that is best left to interpretation, though Hathaway has her own thoughts on the takeaways of the onscreen relationship.
“I think that it’s really exciting when someone finds someone they can be intimate with – and intimacy is not just meaning physical intimacy. You can find someone to be intimate with your trust with. I think that watching two people who have both had their trust taken advantage of, discover that they can be safe and be intimate in that way with each other – in addition to being able to explore pleasure and friendship and humor, all those really yummy things, those really romantic things. It got me really excited,” she said.
“It’s horrible when somebody abuses your trust. It’s really terrible. It’s really hard to recover from, and can take a really long time. But if the opportunity presents itself, take it with both hands and don’t look back. I love seeing a character heal from a trust trauma.”
Hathaway said in the SWAGGER interview that the film was screened for test audiences and that “women over the age of 35 are having an intense emotional reaction to the movie.” (Fellas – that’s code for “date night.”)
“There is something about this movie that is touching something very deep inside of us. I think, perhaps, it’s a fear we’ve internalized that we are going to disappear while we are still alive. This movie says, ‘No, thank you,’ to that entire narrative,” she said, alluding to the carpe diem message in the film.
“It’s a different kind of wish-fulfillment. The wish isn’t, ‘Oh, I want to be a princess, or work at this company.’ The wish is: I want to exist, and I want to feel loved.”
