If youve yet to read Robinne LeesThe Idea of You,youre lucky.
An electric, globe-trotting affair ensues, hurtling them from Cap dAntibes to the Hamptons and Japan.
People who loveThe Idea of Youdo so with borderline unhealthy obsessiveness.
Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway inThe Idea of You, on Prime Video May 2.
We lose sleep reading it on weeknights.
We join Facebook groups about it.
Theres even a name for us: Haysolnuts (a portmanteau inspired by the fictional couple).
We assume it cant be high art.
The movie version ofThe Idea of Youis less an adaptation and more a faint approximation.
In the novel, Solene is alluringly aspirational.
She lives in a sleek home overlooking the ocean and wears Alaia.
I want to do things that feed me, Solene says in the book.
I want to surround myself with art and fascinating people and stimulating experiences…and beauty.
I want to surprise myself.
ShowaltersThe Idea of Youdims Solene in every way.
(Its not hot foreplay.)
The teary conversation unfolds in the kitchen of Solenes quaint starter home, as she describes it.
Hollywood will Hollywood, but the changes toThe Idea of Youscentral character feel almosttoopredictably reductive.
Why does Solene have to be small and scorned to be broadly likable to streaming audiences?
Why cant she be a depiction of fantastical success, like untold heavy-hitting male characters onscreen?
Why does she have to be crunchilyrelatableinstead of living a big, interesting, sometimes scandalously sexual life?
It demeans viewers to assume we couldnt possibly see ourselves in a woman like that.
It ignores the fact that we already didwhen we read Lees words.
Lees Hayes studies art books in an effort to get on Solenes level.
In the movie, he sings into a chicken finger microphone.
Unfortunately, these tweaks also effectively lower the stakes and kill the books most emotional sources of tension.
In their hands, key characters of color arequite boldly in 2024cast with white actors.
Adaptations always take liberties; if it werereallyfaithful, ShowaltersThe Idea of Youwould have an X rating.
But the Prime Video film fails to capture the very essence of the novel.
It fancies itself about a middle-aged woman in the throes of self-discovery, societys sexism and ageism be damned.
People hate happy women, Tracy muses in Solenes kitchen.
But the film applies that very same sexist, ageist judgment to Lees story.
Solene is allowed to date a younger manbut not too young.
Shes singlebut not of her own volition.
People hate happy women?
But this movie hates truly transgressive ones.
