Rye Lane

So, Rye Lane is a romantic comedy – hey wait! Come back! You, yes you: the “all rom coms are cheesy, corny and suck” individual. Rye Lane, despite its brief 82-minute runtime, defies all conventions and blends genres in an endlessly fascinating kaleidoscope of vivid colours and unique cinematography. Is it a buddy comedy? Is it a whacky heist thriller? Is it a piece of metadrama? At times, the answer to all these questions is yes – but it never falls apart or feels convoluted thanks to a seamless screenplay by Nathan Byron and Tom Melia. Above all, the two leads (played by David Jonsson and Vivian Oprah) have a charisma and chemistry so palpable and undeniable that you never want to look away. You’ll definitely walk out of this saying, “how is that film even real!?”

Joshua Chinyama

Of course there is a natural association that comes with London-set rom-coms: over the years we have naturally come to expect Richard Curtis’ fizzing, sentimental meet-cutes as a given, voiced by the bumbling stammer of a hapless, forlorn Hugh Grant. But Rye Lane promises to be something fresh. An optimistic and candy-coloured landscape becomes the setting for a twenty-something’s wooing, through the sunwashed streets of Peckham and Brixton. After an unflattering meeting in the toilets of an art gallery, Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson) bond over their recent break-ups. He is miserable about the prospect of having to meet his ex and her new partner for dinner, upon which Yas feels that acting up as his girlfriend must be the only appropriate response: surely it can’t be foreshadowing anything? The scrapes that ensue, including her retrieval of a vinyl record from an ex-boyfriend’s apartment, keep this bubbly and whimsical movie afloat. The director Raine Allen-Miller (named one of Screen International’s ‘Stars of Tomorrow’ in 2021) has an assured touch for her feature debut, and the leads are more than charming enough to carry off this picture with the wit that it deserves.