Good fan fiction should transport you to the world of your dreams, where you adorably meet your favorite celebrity and fall hopelessly in love. In The Idea of You, when Solène (Anne Hathaway) bumps into Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine), the lead singer of her daughter’s favorite childhood band at Coachella, sparks accidentally fly. He’s unable to walk around Silver Lake without the paparazzi trailing behind, she’s a hot gallery owner who doesn’t really care how famous he is, and so their entanglement begins. At first, the movie sets us up for what looks like sexy, lighthearted fun, but when you remember that we live in an era when you can’t even make out with a celebrity in a crowd without having your identity exposed, it becomes clear that The Idea of You might as well be a horror flick.
Going into this movie, I thought I was going to get a smooth-brained sexy story, but The Idea of You has made one thing very clear to me: The only thing worse than being famous is being a woman dating someone famous. I’ll admit, the initial meeting and subsequent chasing of Solène by Hayes is swoon-worthy — especially when I imagined him as a 2024 version of 1D-era Harry Styles, the real person upon whom he is loosely based. But there are merely a few moments of joy throughout the film. Solène only looks like she is having fun while she’s playing groupie on the band’s European tour. At that point, no one knows about her relationship with Hayes, including her teenage daughter, who has been blissfully unaware of her mom’s whereabouts all summer. A secret romance can be sexy, but it’s such a point of tension in this movie that it stops being fun and starts to veer into tragedy. I can’t imagine that I’d actually find having to keep quiet about my relationship with the lead singer of one of the hottest boy bands in the world arousing, but if this is supposed to be fan fiction, I don’t want to be reminded about the real-world consequences of age-gap relationships between older women and younger men too much.
No matter the couple, when a celebrity is involved, there will always be trolls. But they quickly turn on women more often than they turn on men, calling her a predator if she dates a younger guy, regardless of the size of the age gap. Even though she was already famous when they met, the amount of hate Olivia Wilde received while dating Styles (ten years her junior) from his fan base was excruciating. There were endless hashtags praying for the couple’s downfall, numerous social-media comments suggesting that dating the singer correlated to her being a bad mother, death threats, and constant chatter about the nature of their relationship. Most of his crazed stans conveniently ignored the fact that the relationship began when Styles was 26. Most of the negative press was hyperfixated on Wilde, with Styles’s fans claiming he was a “victim.”
Photo: Alisha Wetherill/Alisha Wetherill/Prime
In The Idea of You, as soon as the world discovers their relationship, Solène finds herself under the intense scrutiny of millions of people, most of whom despise her for dating a famous singer. In real life, we know that she would have haters. (Another couple I couldn’t help but be reminded of while watching the film was Bad Bunny and his ex-girlfriend Gabriela Berlingeri, who now has a horde of online followers tracking her every move.) To its credit, the movie does try to gesture toward the double standard that exists for women by juxtaposing Solène’s new relationship with Hayes against her strained relationship with her ex-husband, who once cheated on her with a much younger woman. He ignorantly assumes Solène’s actions are equal to his and the irony of the situation is clear, but something about the contrast between the two relationships in this film feels unnecessary. Ultimately, when her ex confronts her about it and embarrasses her further in front of the paparazzi, it isn’t even a funny enough moment to make up for the uncomfortable encounters Solène and her daughter continue to have with strangers because of her relationship with Hayes.
And then there’s the feeling that we’re supposed to view the whirlwind affair as Solène’s fault. Solène even seems, sometimes, like she has internalized that blame. If only she hadn’t been so selfless that she took her daughter to Coachella instead of her philandering absentee father of an ex-husband! If only she hadn’t been so careless as to let herself be spotted making out with a younger hunk on the beach in St. Tropez! Ultimately, I signed up to watch some horny fanfic, not a half-baked meditation on slut-shaming.
I was happy to see Solène live a little after her divorce and date someone hot and rich, but it’s hard to believe that all the pain — like being lambasted on TMZ instead of praised for being a MILF — of getting involved with a celeb would be worth it. There are no moments of peace in these types of relationships. Want to grab a bagel hung-over, looking like shit? Think again. Low on money and hoping to avoid tipping for that cold brew you just ordered? Don’t you dare make your boyfriend look cheap by the transitive property! Imagine endless cameras outside your house. I can barely go for a run without thinking about what I look like to others, and I wouldn’t survive onlookers snapping photos of me while I huff and puff. (Or even worse, film a TikTok while I’m red in the face.) It’s unfair what happens to Solène, but I guess it’s reality. This movie has made it clear that the only good path forward with a celebrity is simple: You meet them, you kiss them, and you forget them.
