Love at First Sight (2023)

The romantic comedy remains the most conservative of genres, and Love at First Sight is a faithful servant of that conservatism. Two attractive young people meet at JFK, share a charger, fall in love across an eight-hour flight, and lose each other at customs. What follows is a reunion engineered by coincidence and presided over by a narrator who seems contractually obliged to inform us how it all ends. The film wants nothing more than to be sweet, and it largely succeeds, though sweetness of this kind requires no argument and offers none.

Vanessa Caswill directs from Katie Lovejoy's adaptation of Jennifer E. Smith's novel, and the production has assembled a supporting ensemble that includes Jameela Jamil, Katrina Nare, and Jordan Frazier. This diversity is simply present. It is never summoned to make a point, and the film does not appear aware that a point might be available. The central romance is a thoroughly traditional one, heterosexual, marriage-bound, resolved by a kiss and a promise of fifty-eight years. A female director and a female lead do not convert this into a statement. It is a love story, plainly told.

Where the film gestures toward ideas, it does so lightly. Oliver studies statistical inference and measures his grief in numbers. The narrator frames the proceedings with tidy omniscience. These are narrative devices, not sermons. The film's most substantial material concerns a mother with terminal lung cancer who has chosen to forgo treatment, and even this is handled with a soft hand, never escalating into a message about autonomy or dignity. The result is an amiable, unambitious romance. It has no designs on our politics and intends no offense. On the evidence, it also intends very little else.