Actually, The Love Hypothesis Has More Than 1 Love Story

Since Prime Video announced its movie adaptation of The Love Hypothesis last year, fans of Ali Hazelwood’s hit novel have eagerly awaited the steamy, grumpy-sunshine romance. Now that the film is streaming, the hype has paid off — but Olive and Adam (Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman) aren’t the only love story here.

While rom-com besties are a staple of the genre, Olive’s relationship with Anh (Rachel Marsh) in The Love Hypothesis feels especially fleshed out. Even before establishing Adam as a romantic interest, the film (helmed by director Claire Scanlon and screenwriter Sarah Rothschild) puts Olive and Anh’s friendship first. Literally. From their lecture meet-cute to Anh welcoming Olive into her family’s Christmas festivities, their story plays out like a falling-in-love montage.

By lending narrative weight to their friendship early on, The Love Hypothesis helps ground the stakes of the fake-dating trope that follows. Like in Hazelwood’s novel, Olive only pretends to date Adam to convince Anh to tend to her own love life — a harebrained scheme that feels a little more human when you see just how important Anh is to Olive. And because much of the novel and film’s conflict revolves around sexism in STEM, it’s heartening to see the women lean on each other.

Both Reinhart and Marsh credit Hazelwood (who shares her characters’ scientific background) with planting the seeds for the refreshing depiction of friendship. “I just feel like Ali is so good at writing women,” Marsh says. She adds that the film “is so special because it’s female-led, female-produced, directed. There was a lot of women on set all the time.”

As Reinhart says, “You see that Olive goes to Anh after she’s been through something horrible as her safe space. So they’re really just this connective tissue throughout the whole movie. It’s why the movie exists, it’s why the book exists, is this love story of these two women. And then a love story on top of it.”

Indeed, Olive and Anh’s friendship makes the film’s romantic love story even more authentic because there’s no sense that Adam needs to serve as Olive’s be-all, end-all partner.

“You need to have reflection in your life, and it can’t come from just one person,” Reinhart says. “I don’t think it can come from just one intimate romantic partner. Platonic love and platonic friendship are there for a reason, and it’s so powerful for a reason, and it’s why we connect to friendship stories so deeply.”