"Love, Rosie" Is a Romantic Delight

BELLA BLUMENSCHEIN ’21
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Love, Rosie may seem like a trivial teenage romantic comedy at first, but as the plot progresses, it goes far beyond that. Released in 2014, the British drama stars Lily Collins and Sam Caflin, who play the eighteen-year-olds Rosie and Alex. The two best friends have known each other for way too long and plan on moving to Boston after finishing high school. While Alex is influenced by his powerful father to go to Harvard and become a doctor, Rosie comes from a simple family that supports her dream of owning a hotel. Not to be away from her life-long friend, she applies to Boston University on course to achieve her dreams.
The movie starts with a scene from Rosie’s 18th birthday party in which she gets drunk and kisses Alex. However, while he is struck by what happens and acknowledges the fact that his feelings for her go deeper than he once thought, she does not remember what happened and the topic is never brought up. He therefore tries to ignore his emotions, encouraging her to accept another guy’s offer to be her prom date – and that changes the course of what could have been their story together.
During a one-night-stand with prom date Greg after the school dance, Rosie unintentionally becomes pregnant. Despite being accepted into her dream school, she stays in England to raise her daughter Katie with help from her understanding parents, but does not tell Alex the real reason why she is not going anymore, afraid he would give up on his dream of moving to America and becoming a doctor.
Years go by and even though they keep in touch, Alex only finds out about her child when he flies home to visit, where Rosie works as a maid and lives with her parents. As the movie goes on, they both follow their different paths and deal with a series of unforeseen events, until they find their way back to each other and to the life they once idealized, even with everything that happened in between.
It might be labeled as a teenage romance movie, but what makes it so adored is the fact that it provides comfort. Despite not being the most realistic love story, the point is exactly to provide faith and tranquility. As young adults in high school and college, we constantly find ourselves being told that whatever decisions we make, from who to hang out with to which classes to pick, will influence our lives more than we might think. The pressure to keep making the right decisions, have a 4.0 GPA, and build the perfect resume can become overwhelming and the film shows that not everything is under our control, and blaming ourselves whenever something falls out of place is not at all helpful. Love, Rosie is a movie about decisions, and how we are not totally under the spell of destiny, but more so, it is about letting things be and being at peace with those decisions, realizing that in the end things will fall into place.