Hayes Campbell, the dreamy protagonist of the new romantic comedy “The Idea of You,” has a little bit in common with mega-pop star Harry Styles.
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Hayes, played by Nicholas Galitzine in the film, is a member of the boy band August Moon, which has a very passionate teenage fan following. Styles was a member of a boy band called One Direction. You've probably heard of it.
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Hayes is British. The same goes for Harry Styles.
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Hayes eventually quit the band and began making soulful pop rock. It was the same with Harry.
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Hayes enjoys dating older women, and his relationship with a gallerist named Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway) is the backbone of the film. Harry has also been involved in relationships with older women that have been documented in the tabloids, most notably actress and director Olivia Wilde.
So does “The Idea of You” appear as fanfiction? Oddly enough, even though the shadow of the style has a huge impact on the overall project, it doesn't.
Many headlines have already described the film as “Harry Styles fan fiction,” but Robinne Lee, author of the 2017 novel on which the film is based, said in an interview whether the pop star inspired her book. Generally shy.
“Inspired is a strong word,” Lee said. The author, an actor with degrees from Yale University and Columbia Law School and best known for his roles in films such as “Hitch” and “Fifty Shades of Darkness,” described meeting “the face of a boy I'd never seen before.” ‘In a band I’ve never been interested in,’ I thought, ‘art.’ After the novel became a viral sensation, Lee told Vogue in 2020 that “this book was never supposed to be about Harry Styles.” In a Time article published this month, Lee claimed, “The Internet has decided that Harry Styles is the one who assumes that novels dating fictional celebrities must be based on existing celebrities.” “The worst.”
She's certainly less explicit about the pop star connection than Anna Todd, who turned the “After” series of novels that started explicitly as Styles fan fiction on the Wattpad platform into a movie franchise. (This may be familiar to fans of 'Fifty Shades', which began as a 'Twilight' fanfiction.) However, unlike 'Ideas of You', the 'After' series has nothing to do with boy bands. Harry in 'After' is a college student named Hardin, but when the first novel was published in 2014, this portrayal infuriated some One Direction enthusiasts by turning Stiles into a bad boy who manipulates young women. One 14-year-old Styles fan told the New York Times at the time: “The way Harry is portrayed in this book is disgusting.”
Styles fans, on the other hand, accepted 'The Idea of You' as a text that fueled their obsession. Kayla Kleinman, social media manager for Bookshop.org, said she wasn't a follower of the style when she first read the novel, but after reading it during the pandemic, she became a follower of the style. She said in an interview that she felt an “emotional attachment” to the book, and that she wanted the experience of reading it to continue. So she turned to Styles' music. “In my head, it felt like the story was continuing even though I knew full well that wasn’t the case,” she said. “But for me the next step was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to jump into this world to entertain myself.’” Now, Kleinman has even gone to a Harry Styles concert with her friend, whom she dated as an “idea idea.” Your” Facebook group.
The novel, it's worth noting, differentiates between Harry and Hayes more than the film does. In Lee's version, Hayes is a posh, overgrown boy who personally sets up August Moon. In the film, adapted by director Michael Showalter and his co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt, Hayes was cast in the group after an audition. It's not dissimilar to how Styles appeared on the British version of “The X Factor” before being selected as One. direction. (That said, the book contains quite a bit of discussion of Hayes' dimples, which feels like a direct reference to Stiles' appearance.)
But while these changes bring Hayes on-screen into line with Harry in real life, they surprisingly don't make the film more indebted to Styles. If anything, they make it more realistic than Lee's novels, which sometimes appear with detailed descriptions of luxury hotel furniture and copious lists of sex scenes.
The movie understands that Harry Styles-type fantasy is a powerful thing. Styles wasn't just loved by millions because he was charming, had a great singing voice and an ambitious glam rock style. His fandom perpetuates the idea that he is accepting and, above all, kind. (He also recorded a song called 'Treat People With Kindness,' which he released after his novel, 'Idea of You.') That kindness filters through the new film.
As the film opens, Solen, divorced and on the verge of turning 40, intervenes when her ex-husband (Reid Scott) hatches a last-minute plan to stop her from taking their teenage daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), to Coachella. Izzy (a middle schooler in the novel but older here) is no longer smitten with August Moon and is now into female singer-songwriter types, but her wealthy, indifferent father has paid for her meetings with the band.
Solène accidentally ends up in Hayes' trailer, thinking it's a public restroom, and they meet cute. He is enamored and begins pursuing her by visiting her gallery in her incredibly trendy Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles. There he looks at her with wonder as she explains her art work to him.
Hayes, played by Galitzine, is the perfect man. He is handsome. (Uh.) He's talented. The film's August Moon has its own song, which means fans of Hayes don't have to imagine him singing a One Direction tune, and in any case, Hayes wants to pursue a deeper kind of musicianship. He is persistent without being aggressive, and charming without being sugary. Yes, he is younger than Solen, who is between 20 and 24 years old in the movies, but he does not fetishize her age. He was simply fascinated by her cleverness and beauty.
Galitzine seems to understand that a film like this only works if the audience can see how in love he is with Solène, and he cedes the floor to Hathaway to achieve this. While her book's Solène drops her designer clothes, Hathaway eventually finds her in a period of reassessment after having a child too young with her disappointing husband. As she begins her tryst with Hayes, her caution is met with a bit of self-deprecation that doesn't feel forced. You can see her blossom in Galitzine's gaze, and you can also see her pain as she realizes that their relationship in the public eye will take a toll on her daughter.
In the end, it doesn't really matter whether Hayes is based on Harry Styles or not. Because cute boys aren't really the point anyway. That cute boy makes the heroine feel. If she's in love with her, so are we.