The Idea of You: How (and Why) the Movie Ending Differs From the Book

Sometimes, change is good?

Based on Robinne Lee‘s novel of the same name, the movie The Idea of You (now streaming on Prime Video) turns up the heat with its occasionally wrenching, frequently sexy romance between 40-year-old single mother Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway) and 24-year-old pop star Hayes Campbell (Red, White & Royal Blue‘s Nicholas Galitzine). As the couple’s unexpected relationship unfolds, the film keeps the essence of the book’s May-December romance while deviating, in ways both small and big, from the source material on which it’s based.

But the adaptation’s most significant change comes at the very end (spoiler alert for both the movie and the book!): After the media attention around the relationship gets to be too much for her teenage daughter, Solène breaks things off with Hayes, who later turns up at her home to try to change her mind. The pair share one final, emotional goodbye, during which Hayes pleads with Solène to revisit the idea of them in five years, before he leaves her house.

While Lee’s novel concludes on an angsty note, with the couple broken up and a last line that left this reader completely gutted for weeks, the movie follows up the scene with a five-year flash-forward in which Hayes returns to Solène’s L.A. gallery. As they set eyes on each other, Solène breaks into a tearful smile, hinting that maybe there is a future for these two characters after the screen cuts to black.

This particular ending was “more just the kind of movie we were making. This is not a tragic romance story,” director and co-writer Michael Showalter tells TVLine about the change, adding that he wanted “to give the audience some feeling of hope.”

“There’s so many movies in this genre. I think you just kind of want to get some sense that the two leads, there’s some possibility there. It’s not a finite statement at the end, and so there’s hope for these two characters at the end of this film,” he continues.

Showalter knows that romance movies come with a certain set of viewer expectations, so “there is sort of an element of, like, giving the people what they want. There is some of that,” he says. “I just think, with a movie like this, you want to feel good.”

For diehard lovers of Lee’s story, the Happily Ever After-ish tweak might come as an unwelcome twist — or perhaps it will provide comfort after the novel’s heartbreaking ending.

“I’m also very aware that the fans of the book might feel like we made a big mistake,” Showalter adds, “but I also hope that the movie introduces this story and these characters to new fans. And hopefully, they’ll go and read the book and see that it’s different, and people can continue talking about which version makes more sense.”

For Lee — an actress whose credits include the Fifty Shades films and Being Mary Jane — the flash-forward reunion wasn’t a complete shocker.

“Hollywood has a way of wanting to wrap things up into a pretty little bow and tie all these things together, and I knew that was likely going to happen if I [gave] this book to someone to adapt,” Lee tells TVLine.

As a self-described Francophile, the actress/author wanted the book — which is far steamier than the movie — to have the feel of a French film, which are notorious for their not-so-happy endings, she notes.

“That’s why [the book] was as sexy as it was. That’s why it ended the way it did,” Lee explains. With the movie, “I knew it was going to be an American director and producers making it, [and] it was going to lose a lot of that Frenchness, I guess, and so I wasn’t surprised by them putting on a ‘Five years later…'”

The novel, however, reflects the idea that “sometimes you have these loves that are so profound, and they don’t work out because love doesn’t conquer all,” Lee describes. “It was [the] wrong place and wrong time in their lives, but they were the right people for each other. The timing just didn’t align.”

Even while grappling with the changes the adaptation makes to Solène and Hayes’ journey, Lee believes the movie’s conclusion still carries the spirit of the story she wanted to tell and her characters.

“They never stop thinking about each other. Even though they go on with their lives and she has to do what she has to do for her daughter, I think that she won’t ever fully get over him and vice versa,” Lee says, “and I think Michael does a good job of capturing that. You feel that, years later, they’re still thinking about each other and still pining in a way.”

Lee describes the experience of watching the movie as “surreal” — “It’s weird to see your characters as other people see them. It might not be exactly how you envision them,” she explains — and praises the filmmakers and actors for nailing an essential part of the story.

“There are things about Anne’s performance which I thought were extraordinary. She and Nicholas had an incredible chemistry, and that’s probably the most important part that needed to come across, and I feel like they got that right,” Lee says. “I really feel like Anne and Nick turned in wonderful performances that felt very genuine and passionate when it had to be and emotional when it needed to be. So that I’m very grateful for.”

Lee also singles out a fantastic sequence after Solène boards a flight for New York to meet up with Hayes at his hotel room. As she sits in her airplane seat and then saunters down the hotel hallway, Hathaway’s expression goes through a riveting range of emotions.

“She’s walking down the hall and she’s got this look on her face like she’s committing to what she’s going to do. That struck me. For me, that was a moment that sold everything,” Lee shares. “And it was a bit of cheering on Solène for making this decision. It was also a bit of cheering on Anne for taking on this role and kind of bucking up against America and Hollywood’s idea of who Anne Hathaway is and what she’s capable of and being like, ‘Screw that. Watch me have this moment. Watch me be sexy. Watch me enjoy and commit to it,’ and I just felt this immense pride watching her, like she was my child. That was the most emotional moment for me in the entire thing.”

In the end, both Lee and Showalter hope that the movie will drive fans to check out the book and vice versa.

“It’s very much their movie, and it’s different than the book, but it compliments the book in some way,” Lee says. “I think readers of the book will find things in the movie that they will appreciate, and, ideally, viewers of the movie will find something in the book that they’ll appreciate.”