When you’ve but to learn Robinne Lee’s The Thought of You, you’re fortunate. A richly scorching (and in addition agonizing) journey awaits—and also you’ll in all probability discover the movie model, premiering on Could 2 and starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, completely pleasant. As a tortured superfan of the guide, nonetheless, I can’t not see the variation as primarily failing the supply materials. The movie, directed by Michael Showalter, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jennifer Westfeldt, dulls the guide’s boldness, drastically diminishes its heroine, and, in an trade that fancies itself extra inclusive lately, re-casts characters of colour with white actors.
It helps to know that The Thought of You isn’t only a guide, however a novelistic manifesto for middle-aged feminine readers. Although launched in 2017, it turned “the sleeper hit of the pandemic,” as I wrote for Vogue in 2020, powered by a passionate, dominantly feminine word-of-mouth marketing campaign. Within the throes of isolation, restlessness, and over-mothering, The Thought of You opened a portal to a glittering alternate universe, one by which a classy 39-year-old L.A. artwork gallerist and divorcée, Solène Marchand, forges a cosmic reference to 20-year-old British boy band member Hayes Campbell, a younger god written with glimmers of Harry Types and different well-known lads, together with Eddie Redmayne and Prince Harry. An electrical, globe-trotting affair ensues, hurtling them from Cap d’Antibes to the Hamptons and Japan.
Individuals who love The Thought of You accomplish that with borderline unhealthy obsessiveness. We lose sleep studying it on weeknights. We be a part of Fb teams about it. We re-read it and binge the audiobook narrated by Lee, a veteran actress who nails all of the accents in her velvety voice. There’s even a reputation for us: Haysolnuts (a portmanteau impressed by the fictional couple). We’re wooed not simply by the journey, the copious, deftly written intercourse, or the overlap between the 2 (Hayes ministering to Solène atop a yacht in Anguilla springs to thoughts), however the subversiveness of a Could-December romance by which a girl is the elder; the all-too-rare “story a couple of girl approaching 40 and reclaiming her sexuality and rediscovering herself,” as Lee informed me, “simply on the level that society historically writes ladies off as fascinating and viable and complete.”
The Yale-educated creator knew how tales like this are usually acquired in a patriarchal tradition and, in a meta twist, she funneled that theme into The Thought of You. “We take artwork that appeals to ladies—movie, books, music—and we undervalue it,” Solène tells Hayes of his boy band, August Moon, in what turned a much-shared quote, together with after Barbie’s best-director snub. “We assume it could possibly’t be excessive artwork.”
