This summer’s next must-see rom-com is here in the form of “Oh, Hi!,” starring Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman. But this original film from writer and director Sophie Brooks doesn’t follow the typical rom-com formula, as it looks at dating through a modern-day lens and a decidedly female gaze.
That element is precisely what enticed Lerman to star in the indie, after years of having romance scripts sent his way and turning them down. As the actor told TheWrap, he’s “been really particular about which one I want to commit to and be a part of” for a simple reason.
“Generally speaking, oftentimes I read them, and they’re kind of down the middle,” he explained. “You kind of know what’s going to happen at the end. The character is kind of bland.”
Lerman immediately clarified that he’d certainly watch a movie like that, and has, as he really does love the genre. But none of the actual roles he was sent really “grabbed” him.
Then came “Oh, Hi!”
Now in theaters, Brooks’ sophomore film centers on Iris (Gordon) and Isaac (Lerman), who head upstate for a weekend away as a couple. They do all the clichés, but apparently, Isaac doesn’t actually consider him and Iris a couple — a revelation he drops hours later, after they have sex.
Despite four months of acting like one, he thinks they are not exclusive, claiming that the conversation they had about the matter actually ended in Iris saying it’s OK for him to sleep with other women, so long as he’s using protection.
The thing is, Isaac and Iris experimented with bondage in this particular sexual encounter, and Isaac didn’t have the forethought to wait until after he was uncuffed from the bed to tell Iris all this. She breaks a bit, and decides to keep him chained up, asking for 12 hours to prove to him that they should be together.
Despite how that sounds, Iris never goes full Kathy Bates in “Misery.” According to Gordon, finding the balance in the character was a key piece of the story.
“That was the conversation with Sophie from the beginning, how do we make her someone that other women will see themselves in and go, ‘Ooh, if I was 5% crazier, would I do this?’” Gordon told TheWrap. “So we wanted to push it a bit, but also never take it too far, where you’re starting to feel like, ‘Oh, this woman has really lost her f–king mind, and there’s no road back.’”
The reality of that miscommunication, and the way modern dating often finds people in relationships that are inevitably going to implode “felt really personal” and “so relevant” to Lerman, and that’s what sealed the deal for him to star in it. “I feel like we haven’t seen that in movies, very much,” he said.
In a bit of irony, despite the fact that the fresh, female perspective was what drew Lerman to “Oh, Hi!,” the movie may not exist if the actor had not lent his name to it.
“This movie was not made because of me. It was made because Logan said yes,” Gordon admitted. “He’s really the one who got the female gaze going on this one.”
According to the actress, it does not feel like the industry is moving in the direction where movies with a female perspective like “Oh, Hi!” have an easier time getting made, so she was thrilled to have the support.
“I think a big reason of why I never gave up on this project was my belief in it, but also my belief in Sophie as a filmmaker, and that a lot of women don’t want to take a chance on female directors,” Gordon said. “I keep saying this, but the Nicole Kidman thing, of like, ‘I’m going to work with this many female directors,’ more people need to do that, because that’s the only way to get more of these kinds of movies out there.”
Funnily enough, if you ask Brooks herself, making sure “Oh, Hi!” had such a female gaze was not exactly the outright goal, if only because that’s “just inherent to who I am.”
“So having that perspective, it’s kind of hard to parse how much of it is thought out, versus just my instinct and my nature,” she told TheWrap.
That said, there were still moments that both Brooks and Gordon felt strongly about including that are just realities for women.
“She pees after she has sex, you know? She’s trying to not get a UTI,” Brooks said with a laugh. “That’s a very female perspective on that kind of thing. Or, I actually think this moment was an improv by Molly in the sex scene, but when she’s like, ‘It’s a bright lamp, I feel self-conscious.’ That’s a very honest female perspective, I think, of feeling like ‘I feel a little shy in this moment.’”
Gordon agreed, saying the elements of Iris and Isaac’s sex life, including their newness to bondage, was something she and Brooks focused on. Iris’s ride-or-die friendship with Max (Geraldine Viswanathan) was another.
In the big picture though, Brooks did want to make a point about how women are shown to treat and view love in film.
“I really push back at the idea that a woman wanting love is is desperate or needy, which I think is sometimes how things are framed in films, of, you know, ‘Oh God, this nag of a wife,’ or ‘Oh, this girlfriend,’” she said.
“I think we’re all just people who want connection, and this movie is pushing back against that idea of a woman wanting that being desperate,” she continued. “Obviously, I’m leaning into the crazy that she comes [to], but also showing how she kind of becomes that way because of his behavior.”
“Oh, Hi!” is now in theaters.
