Modern romantic comedies, rare as they have become, have a tendency to feel fixated on the main couple and not the world that they live in. Think back to the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally…” (RIP Rob Reiner) and how central the Katz’s Deli location is to making the New York setting feel real and lived-in. These days, rom-coms tend to be streaming-first ventures, and they all suffer from the same kind of lazy digital cinematography that abstracts backgrounds into interchangeable landscapes of bokeh and little else. It’s the iPhone portrait mode approach to staging scenes.
First-time feature director Raine Allen-Miller and her cinematographer, Olan Collardy, bring an altogether different approach to “Rye Lane,” a British film from a few years ago named after the market in South London that features prominently. While watching the film, you’ll fall rather quickly in love with Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivia Oparah), a pair of youths who help one another move on from their respective rough breakups. But you’ll also be struck by how immersive, rich, and alive their surroundings feel. In seeking to make the romance that arises between Dom and Yas feel lively and multidimensional, Allen-Miller pens a love letter to Brixton and Peckham around them.
We meet Dom crying in the stall of a unisex bathroom, but before we meet him, the camera floats over multiple stalls, showcasing a vivid and diverse array of people before landing on Dom, immediately establishing the tenor of the film. Yas is in the same bathroom, peeing in one stall while he bawls in the next. It’s unique as far as meetcutes go. After it’s revealed that the restroom is at an art gallery opening for a mutual friend of theirs, the characters finally find themselves face to face.
The obstacles and asides that occur along their path all feel elaborate and well thought-out, instead of mere perfunctory moments of conflict to keep the lovebirds from growing closer.
Yas recognizes Dom’s sneakers from the bathroom so she knows he is being polite and putting on a brave face. They’re a study in opposites. Dom, still reeling from heartbreak, is reserved, insular, clearly frustrated with himself for leaving the house and subjecting himself to the mortifying horror of being perceived. But Yas, coming off an uncoupling herself, is brash and impulsive, and, seeing Dom down in the dumps, wants to pull him from the inertia of self-hatred that comes with being abandoned. Initially their dynamic is a woman who left a man trying to comfort a man left by a woman, as though Yas wants to work through her own guilt by doing a good deed.
Once they leave the exhibition, the pair is pulled through a kaleidoscopic series of walk and talks, calling to mind Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” only Allen-Miller makes it a point of pride to luxuriate in the environs they traverse. Often, she stages the pair in such a way that they feel like the background, and the larger world around them feels like the real attraction. It’s a fascinating and entertaining approach for a genre that’s been so stifled in recent history. It extends beyond the playful and involved staging of the present proceedings, taking the stories Dom and Yas tell one another from memories and playing them out like immersive interludes they themselves appear in, as if walking inside one another’s subconscious.
The obstacles and asides that occur along their path all feel elaborate and well thought-out, instead of mere perfunctory moments of conflict to keep the lovebirds from growing closer. When their dynamic is inevitably altered by a successive pair of revelations, it rings true to the complex nature of interpersonal relations. Dom and Yas are presented with interlocking insecurities and complimentary strengths, but their weaknesses are challenging. But the way Jonsson and Oparah play them, the intoxicating levels of chemistry they display together, makes for a love story that feels honest and relatable, despite the borderline cartoonish stylization that goes on around them.
There’s one sequence in particular that encapsulates what works so well about the film. Early on, Dom is invited to have lunch with his ex, Gia (Karene Peter), and the man she left him for, his best friend Eric (Benjamin Sarpong-Broni). Yas crashes the affair, pretending to be Dom’s new girlfriend to make Gia jealous. As the miniature drama unfolds, each angle of the square is so clear. We see Gia already actively trying to dim Eric’s light, rounding off the edges of his loud, himbo persona, which, in turn makes some of Dom’s demeanor more understandable, as a man whose partner has cut him down piece by piece, day by day, for years.
Then we see how Yas builds him back up, breathing life back into him, even if it’s initially under fictitious pretenses. And lest this early set-up reduce her to some kind of manic pixie dream girl, later developments flip the dynamic, allowing Yas the same kind of space to be vulnerable and unwieldy. It proves so touching because of how real it becomes.
The film is one of the most ebullient pictures in recent memory, bursting at the seams with charm and humor.
The film is one of the most ebullient pictures in recent memory, bursting at the seams with charm and humor. Whether it’s Colin Firth’s uncredited cameo as the cashier of a tortilla hop called “Love Guac’tually,” any number of other eye-catching background players stealing scenes without so much as a word, or the greatest cinematic usage of “Sign Your Name” by Terence Trent D’Arby, this is a film that overachieves in painting a portrait that feels larger than life while also staying so true to it.
Not since “Before Sunrise” has a film so assertively established a new trio of talent. Allen-Miller comes out of this as a storyteller to watch, but Jonsson, with the indelible way his facial expressions project internal struggles, and Oparah, in her audacious screen presence and enviable ability to perform comedy in such a naturalistic manner, come off as future stars. Jonsson, luckily, has gotten to show even more of that in films like “Alien: Romulus” and “The Long Walk,” but this critic longs to see Oparah getting similar looks in the future.
Years from now, “Rye Lane” will be looked back at as a launching pad for a filmmaker and two fantastic performers whose careers will no doubt wow us. But for now, it’s one of the most fun and affecting romances you can watch in the most amorous month of the year.
“Rye Lane” is currently streaming on Hulu or can be watched for free with ads on The Roku Channel.