Feature first-timer Raine Allen Miller directs this romcom urban-pastoral, goofing and freewheeling around the streets of south London with an almost childlike innocence – shot by Olan Collardy in rich colour with cartoony wide-angle streetscapes, and scripted by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia. Unsubtle and on-the-nose though it undoubtedly is, there is also an amiable, upbeat energy.
It benefits from two sympathetic leads: Vivian Oparah (from BBC TV’s Dr Who spin-off Class) and David Jonsson. Oparah plays Yas, a wannabe fashion designer, waiting for people to call her back for interviews for jobs. She finds herself in the gender-neutral lavatories at a photography exhibition and overhears recently heartbroken Dom (Jonsson) sobbing in one of the stalls; Dom’s humiliation is then complete when Yas asks him tentatively through the door if he’s OK, then has to tell him that this toilet is not, as he assumed, the “gents”.
But Yas cheerfully befriends the miserable Dom once he emerges and is incensed to hear that he is on his way to a demeaning lunch date with his high-handed ex and her new boyfriend, the sole purpose of which is for him to be submissive and give them his blessing. So the impulsive and irrepressible Yas shows up as well, pretending to be Dom’s assertive new girlfriend, an imposture which ends in chaos. But it is also a kind of liberation for them both: Yas and Dom find themselves strolling around cathartically together afterwards with no particular place to go, at one stage encountering a surreally cast A-lister as a street food vendor, while Yas opens up about the shortcomings of the man she recently broke up with.
The problem was that he was a “non-waver”; when they were on a bridge somewhere, and people on a tourist boat below waved at them, Yas would always good-naturedly wave back but this man was too cool to do so, indicating a fundamental lack of humanity. As for the luckless Dom, one of the problems was that he had hoped to surprise his girlfriend by placing chocolates in their bed, but they melted, leading to a highly unsexy misunderstanding. They hatch a plan to rescue one of Yas’s favourite vinyl LPs which her noisome ex still has at his flat, and of course this leads to more wackiness, and – who knows? – there could be a spark between them.
Admittedly there’s not much in the way of nuance or realism here, and as a veteran of children’s shows, co-screenwriter Nathan Bryon maybe gives this a bit too much of a kids-TV feel. But it has an engagingly unpretentious style and Jonsson and Oparah are likable performers.
Rye Lane premiered at the Sundance film festival and will be released on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK on 31 March
