Anne Hathaway shines in movie adaptation of The Idea of You

Anne Hathaway fits flawlessly with Nicholas Galitzine in a movie version which adds emotional depth to a winning story, writes Leigh Paatsch.

THE IDEA OF YOU (M)

Director: Michael Showalter (The Big Sick)

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Ella Rubin, Reid Scott

Rating: ***1/2

When age is a number that won’t fit any equation

A classic 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-to-day existence is just as busily blocked-out 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.

The well-matched screen pairing of Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine.

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 rom-com – 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.

The Idea of You is now streaming on Prime Video

BOY KILLS WORLD (MA15+)

Rating: **

General release

Bill Skarsgaard in Boy Kills World.

They should have titled this hyper-ballistic brawl-fest ‘Movie Kills Brain Cells’. For if anyone makes it right through to the end, they will have voluntarily sacrificed a few IQ points that won’t be coming back any time this decade. An incongruously complicated script fuses a fair whack of the John Wick franchise with bits and pieces of The Hunger Games to tell the story of Boy (Bill Skarsgard), a musclebound lunk unable to speak, hear or relax. At the base of the deep pit of all of Boy’s anxieties is an evil family named the Van Der Koys. This heartless clan rule a dystopian metropolis where the population is thinned each year courtesy of a televised tournament known as The Culling. Winning contestants of The Culling receive the dubious honour of staying alive for the next one.

Aside from a late-breaking twist which may earn the grudging respect of welded-on action fans, much of the movie plays out as everybody would expect. On a technical level, the production does hold some merit, largely due to a handful of fight sequences which are undeniably executed with true anarchic flair. Co-stars Famke Janssen, Michelle Dockery.

THE TASTE OF THINGS (PG)

Rating: ****

Selected cinemas

Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in The Taste of Things. Picture: Stephanie Branchu/Unifrance

Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel as two like-minded, yet independent spirits. Picture: Carole Bethuel/Unifrance

Lovers of great food on film had better cancel all other reservations and take a seat at the table of this sumptuous visual feast. Set in the later stages of the 19th century – a period may gourmands regard as the golden age of French cuisine – this elegant and intuitive movie documents the many flavours of a rich relationship concocted by two elite chefs. Dodin Bouffant (Benoit Magimel) is the more widely renowned of the pair. However, his longtime protege and companion, Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), is arguably the more gifted.

The movie begins at a juncture where the couple already know each other well. By the end, viewers will feel just as closely acquainted with two like-minded, yet independent spirits. Whatever you do, don’t be showing up late here, as the screen menu commences with an extraordinary 40-minute sequence tracking the preparation of a single exquisite meal in beguilingly fine detail.