Pass The Torch

With Rye Lane, the British rom-com is finally looking towards the future. Sam Moore meets director Raine Allen-Miller and star Vivian Oparah to talk South London, Richard Curtis, and real chemistry.

“If somebody had actually said this is a rom com, I’d have said I’m not doing a rom com.” Raine Allen-Miller is the director of Britain’s buzziest rom-com since Hugh Grant ran a bookshop, but Rye Lane could have just as easily ended up in somebody else’s hands. It wasn’t just the genre that had Allen-Miller second guessing, but also the prospect of directing a script that wasn’t from her pen (Rye Lane was written by Nathan Byron and Tom Melia). Yet a snorting hysterical read of the screenplay on a train journey was enough for her to helm the film.

With a sprinkling of Wes Anderson colour and a lick of Spike Lee’s detail for location with the jokes of Nora Ephron, Rye Lane is the revolutionary jolt the rom-com and British cinema needed. Its set up is a classic – boy and girl, both freshly single, meet in unisex toilets at an art exhibition and over the course of one very event-filled day, gradually fall in love. There are vinyl heists, dancing cowboys and the funniest dinner scene since Meet the Parents across the director’s home stretch of South London and landmarks such as Morley’s, Peckhamplex and a climactic wave at the Tate Modern. While on paper the premise is nothing you haven’t seen before, Allen-Miller’s vibrant visual language, some fantastic jokes and an ensemble of note-perfect performances mean Rye Lane is not just another rom-com.

The duo at the heart of the film are heartbroken accountant Dom whose girlfriend cheated on him with his best mate, and aspiring fashion designer Yas who claims to have recently dumped her arty boyfriend who refuses to wave at boats. They’re played by Industry star David Jonsson, and Vivian Oparah respectively. Part of the film’s charm is in the embrace of the messiness of everyday life, and that’s what attracted Oparah to the script. “Yas felt like such a real woman,” Oparah says on the day Rye Lane opens Manchester Film Festival. “She is so unapologetically messy and spins through everything at 100 miles an hour. She basically drags Dom along by his ear on this escapist adventure.”

Without chemistry between Jonsson and Oparah, there is no film as the introverted Dom and flamboyant Yas riff off each other with the fizz and excitement of a band playing their biggest gig. Oparah says: “We just had immediate banter. We were initially paired with other people [for the chemistry read] and you always want the person you start with to do well but once I was in the room with David, it all just made sense.”

Allen-Miller admits she wasn’t entirely sure who Dom and Yas were until she ended up with Jonsson and Oparah together: “I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew it was them. I remember with Vivian, when she walked out the audition, I looked to the casting director and was like, ‘We’ve found her.’ It was the same with David, but I was worried they wouldn’t have any chemistry together because I can’t work with actors who as soon as you say cut go to their Winnebago and hate each other. But they had something real. They walked into the room together and it was amazing.”

What Allen-Miller (directing her first feature after years working on commercials and short films) felt in that room is what audiences will feel when they see Dom and Yas on the big screen.

Both Allen-Miller and Oparah come from musical backgrounds. Allen-Miller promoted grime nights where Oparah would perform (after a detour to study neuroscience at university), and that experience comes in handy with the thoroughly musical Rye Lane. Allen-Miller has a defined ear for sound with a score by multi-hyphenate Kwes and a mostly British soundtrack with bopping appearances by Stormzy, Sampha and the one and only Daniel Bedingfield. The two big exceptions come in the form of A Tribe Called Quest and Salt n Pepa, the latter of which adorns a hysterical karaoke sequence that highlights Oparah’s rapping abilities.

So why ‘Shoop’ by Salt n Pepa? For Allen-Miller, it’s a song that hits the karaoke sweet spot: “There are moments where music is supposed to be embarrassing. What’s great about that track is that it’s a banger, but also embarrassing to perform.” Oparah adds: “It’s more embarrassing if you’re actually good at karaoke. That cringes me out.” Together, the actor and director are more like lifelong friends than work colleagues and their relationship is an embodiment of the warmth of Rye Lane.

Shot on location in Peckham and Brixton, the film is imbued with a lived-in reality. From the real-life moonwalking cowboy to a brief appearance by Levi Roots to the extended cookout sequence, Allen-Miller’s film is an authentically detailed and fully-realised depiction of working-class Black life in South London. Rye Lane is as much a film about the magic of community as it is about the magic of love.

“Filming locally added so much,” Allen-Miller says, her visual stylishness adding her to the increasingly long list of debut British female directors that are storming the gates such as Charlotte Wells, Georgia Oakley and Nida Manzoor. “The environment is so alive, it just gives it a freshness each day because something [unscripted] will happen and you love it so you put it in the film.” She adds: “The script was originally set in Camden, but I was like this belongs in South London.”

Rye Lane also proudly pays tribute to the ghosts of Brit-com past in the form of a hilarious cameo that will remain unnamed, but appears manning a burrito shop named Love Guactually. Allen-Miller secured the cameo through the old fashioned method of writing a letter: “I wrote to him saying this is a new kind of rom-com and we’d love your support. He said he was happy to do it. It was so surreal having lunch with him.” The scene is a true passing of the torch moment, a cheeky nod to the past and an embrace of the present and future. Rye Lane is here, and it ain’t going anywhere.

Rye Lane is in cinemas from March 17.