Imagine Me & You

What can I even say about Imagine Me & You? It’s like an entry-level requirement for being a queer girl; once you identify yourself as such and starting looking for queer lady movies, Imagine Me & You happens. And frankly, thank god. For me and I think, a lot of other young, queer girls, this was one of our first WLW movies. And it’s a good place to start.

Imagine Me & You is about two women who have a borderline soulmate connection. The first is Rachel. At the start of the movie, she marries her longtime boyfriend, Heck. However, at the wedding, Rachel’s eyes lock with Luce, a florist. From that moment on, the connection between the two women is irresistible.

One of the most miraculous things about Imagine Me & You is how neither Rachel, Luce or Rachel’s husband Heck come across as assholes in it. The easiest and most common way WLW films deal with one character being in a relationship already is by making their existing partner a jerk. Rachel’s husband Heck isn’t. He’s a genuinely nice guy who loves his wife.

With that being true, it is then a true testament to the love story this film builds and the chemistry of its two leads that neither of the women come across as unlikable despite the fact that their relationship develops while Rachel is still married.

As a movie, Imagine Me & You is completely dependent on the chemistry between its leads. If we don’t believe these women to really have the magnetic, effortless attraction the script says they have, the movie wouldn’t work. My god by Piper Perabo and Lena Headey do though. Their relationship is exactly that; magnetic and effortless.

Imagine Me & You is really, a pretty standard romantic comedy. It is steeped and tropes and cliches. Were this a heterosexual film, I doubt I would like it. But it is not a heterosexual film and that is what makes it so remarkable.

Imagine Me & You is not the only WLW romantic comedy by any means but it is the one that feels the most like a straight film. That sounds like a negative but it isn’t.

The relationship and all tropes involved play out the same regardless of this factor. This is something I usually can’t say about queer romances. I understand the need for discussion and pointing out how being queer can be an inherently different experience but I also like seeing that queer ladies too can have this simplistic, mostly happy relationship complete with a big romantic reunion at the end. This is a movie that allows queer women to have the same feeling as straight women do when they see a Nicholas Sparks movie.

I cried the first time I saw Imagine Me and You. I was in high school at the time and still unsure of my sexuality. Pretty much all other WLW films I’d seen up until now had been very heavy, depressing and had most often ended in death.

At the end of the movie, Rachel and Luce run towards each other in a traffic jam. My knowledge of WLW films being what it was at the time, I was so certain this would end in tragedy too. I expected Rachel or Luce to get suddenly hit by a car and I’d be left with another narrative that told me people like me couldn’t be happy. The thought that these lovely, likable women wouldn’t get a happy ending made me cry. When Imagine Me & You subverted my expectations and allowed them to be alive, happy and together at the end, I cried harder. This was the first time I saw a movie that allowed its WLW to be happy. That was something I desperately needed to see in movies.

Imagine Me & You deserves its spot as an entry-level film for budding WLW. It has the look and feel of a Hollywood movie as opposed to a smaller indie feature which makes accessible. It is a standard yet well-executed romantic comedy that just happens to feature queer women. It has a happy ending. There are certainly many WLW movies with more artistic merit or challenging ideas or whatever. But for someone just discovering the genre, Imagine Me & You is a really excellent choice for an early feature as well as one to revisit when you’re feeling down and just need something that makes you feel warm and happy.

Overall rating: 9.4/10

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