Jennifer E. Smith's Love At First Sight opens with a quote from Charles Dickens. "It's a Dickens quote that I love that says, 'And oh, there are days in this life worth life and worth death,'" the author tells me over Zoom. "To me, that's always been the center of the story. It's the fact that you can have all these positive things and negative things happen in the course of a day. That there's grief and there's love and there's life."
The novel's rom-com adaptation, which hit Netflix on September 15, follows Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson) and Oliver (Ben Hardy), who wind up on the same airplane from New York City to London. They hit it off immediately, but after they land (and immediately get separated), they realize they're in London for wildly different reasons: Hadley is here for her father's wedding to a woman she's never met, and Oliver is here for his mother's living memorial.
"From the start, it was really important to try and make it feel quirky and aspirational and fun and joyful, and then also feel grounded and truthful," director Vanessa Caswill says.
"I was so, so pleased with the way it all worked out with the tone of it because I think that this story is so much about wish fulfillment," Smith says. "I think what was so important, and what I was so grateful for, is there's a version of this that's incredibly cheesy. [Instead,] everyone involved with the film took this very kind of lovely, emotional, romantic idea and told it in a way that had a lot of charm and character and life to it, but that also felt very true and grounded."
Image via Rob Baker Ashton/Netflix.
Love at First Sight. Jameela Jamil as Narrator in Love at First Sight.
The scene that best captures this balance would have to be the living memorial for Oliver's mother, who's battling cancer and decides she doesn't want to miss out on a celebration of her own life. Instead of throwing a regular memorial, the family hosts a Shakespeare-themed one, featuring costumes, recitations, and performances.
"It is pretty wacky, it is a sort of crazy thing to do, but I actually felt like those people would do it," Caswill says. "So it was really about asking in each moment, 'How is this truthful? How is this honest?' And making sure it felt like it was."
It's a scene that could have come across strange and disjointed, but instead it nearly brought me to tears. This dedication to truth and honesty — without sacrificing the beauty and love that we love to see in a rom-com — really sets the film apart.
Aside from the memorial, Love At First Sight features different nods to Shakespeare. Jameela Jamil's role as narrator could be considered a wink to A Midsummer Night's Dream's Puck, while a scene involving Hadley, Oliver, and a balcony is totally Romeo and Juliet. Plus, the pure joy and beauty that comes through the screen doesn't just emphasize romance between two partners — it emphasizes that life itself can be romantic.
Every scene in the film (the memorial, Hadley's father's wedding, sitting in a market under fairy lights) is a joy to watch because of how much fun the actors are having. While Smith wasn't able to join the set during the main filming because of COVID, she did get to join them for some reshoots.
"I was able to go and spend some time with Haley and Jameela, and the two of them are just hilarious," Smith says. "They're hilarious together, they're hilarious the moment the camera turns off. It shocked me how funny they can be, and then how quickly they can get into character when it's time to roll. I was such a fan of both of them beforehand. I was a fan of Ben's. I was a huge fan of Rob Delaney, Sally Phillips, Dexter Fletcher. Everybody is just so talented. This is really a dream cast."
"We had a funny time when we were shooting the memorial," Caswill says. "There was a sequence of performances where people were performing for the family, and this very sweet guy had learned a Shakespeare speech and he was taking it very seriously." The actor in question couldn't seem to remember his lines, and spent the entire sequence trying to just get through the speech (a moment that actually made it into the film). "The crew were in the audience just cracking up because he was so funny. And we were saying, 'It's brilliant. It's brilliant!'"
"When the family were together, they were just bantering and improving and laughing, it was just fantastic," she continues. "The day that we shot the father-daughter dance [with Haley Lu Richardson and Rob Delaney] was the most joyful day because I don't think anyone had been to a party for so long, for almost a year. We had the music up and everyone's dancing, and it was just pure joy and silliness."
Image via Rob Baker Ashton/Netflix
Love at First Sight. (L to R) Haley Lu Richardson as Hadley Sullivan and Ben Hardy as Oliver Jones in Love at First Sight.
The joy from the performances is emphasized by the film's color palette (shoutout to costume designer Kirsty Halliday and production designer Francesca Massariol!), and it's just bursting with different shades of red and green, a variety of textures, and different kinds of light.
"You notice it from the first moment, and I think the way it feels so stylized, it gives it a real whimsical quality," Smith says. "A book is not as visual a medium, and to see it come to life in that way with these actors, with these colors, with this set design, when I saw the early pictures of sets — I've been thrilled all the way through."
"We were obsessed with the palette," Caswill says. "The palette was like, everything."
"It was so important that we were always on exactly the same page with what we did with color, what we're doing with lighting, and how is it going to create a really distinct tone the whole way through," she continues. Although when I ask whether they intended to tie red to Hadley and green to Oliver, she admits they weren't quite that intentional. "I think that might have just been a nice happy accident."
But the colors and design aren't the only inspirational forces for the two creatives, and before we finish our chat, I have to ask what's been inspiring them. To breathe life into new projects and new characters, Smith loves to take in other people's work or go on a walk and take in the scenery around her. "I think it's always a well you're trying to dip back into, especially in between projects and when you're trying to figure out what comes next, and sometimes it's just space and other people's words and stories that can really jog something," she says.
"I also spend quite a lot of time with music, I think particularly when I had the script in front of me and I was like, 'What does this scene feel like?'" Caswill says. "I would just go off and walk and play music and go, 'This is the feeling of it. This is the color of it. This is how it comes life.' And then when a song would resonate, even if the song's got nothing to do with the final outcome, it just kind of pushes life into it and an energy and a mood and a tone, and that kind of lights me up in a way."
Watch Love At First Sight on Netflix now, and check out our Fall Movies story for more inspo, and our Interview page for more exclusives!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
