“The Idea of ​​Being With You” on Prime Video made us fall in love with Anne Hathaway all over again

May 2022. Anne Hathaway discovers the Cannes Film Festival for the first time where it is presented in competition Armageddon Time by James Gray. The film hits theaters a few months later. His next three projects will remain unpublished in France. Available this Thursday, May 2 on Prime Video, The idea of ​​being with you marks as much the reunion of the American actress with her French audience as with the genre that revealed her more than 20 years ago. A mix of comedy and romance in which she excels.

Worthy of fan fiction, the starting point of this tender, not always rosy romance could frighten the most refractory. Owner of a small art gallery, Solène Marchand is slowly recovering from her divorce. When her ex has an impediment, she’s the one who has to accompany their teenage daughter and her friends to the Coachella music festival where their favorite band from their college years is performing. Chance puts her on the path of Hayes Campbell, the handsome British boy from the boy band in question, an ersatz of One Direction. Between them, the current passes immediately. Except that she is 40, he is 24. Enough to sting a society which will be quick to judge them, whereas nothing would have been said if their places were reversed.

This is a film about a woman healing her heart after massive trust trauma

Anne Hathaway at the New York Times

Americans use the expression “May December” to qualify romantic relationships marked by a significant age difference. That of Solène and Hayes was born from the imagination of actress Robinne Lee who was inspired by her own desires to write her first novel. After watching a clip on YouTube for a boy band that she refuses to name, she explains to her husband that she “found the perfect man” with whom she counts well “to escape” to follow him like a groupie. “He laughed and said to me, ‘You’re crazy. But that would make a really good story.'”she tells Guardian. Released in 2017, the book has enjoyed resounding success during the pandemic. Until Amazon decided to bring it to the screen.

Of the improbable first meeting – reminiscent of that of lovers of Everything except you – to the declaration that puts butterflies in the stomach, all the obligatory passages of the romantic comedy are respected. But The idea of ​​being with you has a little something extra, the personal journey of its heroine. “This is a film about a woman healing her heart after massive trust trauma, and that fulfillment can happen in a person’s life at any stage”insists Anne Hathaway to the New York Times.

She chose her prince charming herself

In the role of Solène, the actress finds a little of the candor of Princess against her And The devil wears Prada. Plus life experience. Like her, her character is from New Jersey and “tried at all costs to please others”. Like her, her character faces fierce criticism online. Fame “Hathahate”the online hate campaign waged in 2013 against Anne Hathaway when she won her Oscar for Wretched even cost her roles, according to her.

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So seeing Solène give herself a second chance at love only doubles ours for the 42-year-old American actress, perfect in her forties who finally dares to break out of the boxes in which she has been confined. Also a producer of the film, she herself chose her acting partner, the Englishman Nicholas Galitzine, 29 years old, with whom the tension is electric from the start. A former prince of cinema too, in a musical version of Cinderella and in the movie My Dear F**ing Prince. “When he came into the room for the audition, I chuckled. It was him (…). I don’t know if you heard him sing but, phew, that’s something!”enthuses Anne Hathaway on American television, visibly impatient for the spectators to give in to the serenade of the handsome Hayes.

>> The idea of ​​being with you (1h55) – on Prime Video