‘Rye Lane’ is Middling, At Best. A Colourful ‘Before Sunrise’ Rip-off [Review]

Here’s another film being overpraised to the high heavens.

Raine Allen-Miller’s debut, “Rye Lane,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, was bought by HULU and has today been made available on the streamer.

An 81 on Metacritic is further proof at how critics have lost their minds. Ditto its 99 on Rotten Tomatoes. High marks for what amounts to an amateurish and overstylized take on “Before Sunrise.”

“Rye Lane” takes place in South London, an atmospheric multicultural ground that turns out to be its own character .

The film takes place over the course of a day, following the romance between twenty-somethings Dom (David Jonsson) and freespirited Yas (Vivian Oparah), both recovering from bad breakups.

Call it a Gen-Z “Before Sunrise,” which is essentially what “Rye Lane” purports to be. But what it lacks is the subtle substance of Linklater’s film. Touring the local area, chatting along the way and growing closer to each other, the film has an air of formulaic deja vu that it can’t escape.

Allen-Miller shoots the whole thing quite beautifully. The colors are magnificent, as is the inventive camerawork, but it does feel like overload, a severe case of style over substance.

What “Rye Lane” essentially amounts to is a straightforward boy-meets-girl story, but filled with contrivances and implausible events. Unlike Linklater, Allen-Miller can’t deal with just making a dialogue-driven film, she needs to add flourish upon flourish, subplot upon subplot because she doesn’t trust our attention spans, nor hers, it seems.

There’s unending dialogue about Don and Yas’ recent relationships, and the emotions just don’t ring true. Neither do the side characters, who come and go as our protagonists walk through the neighbourhood — exes and friends pop up, apartments, art galleries are visited, but Allen-Miller’s vibrant camera can’t help but distract with overstylization.

They eventually plan to rescue one of Yas’s favourite vinyl LPs from her ex’s home, but, dumbfoundingly, decide to break in when they realize he’s not home. They will obviously not escape unscathed.

Despite this being a rather simple story, the filmmaking overcomplicates the narrative. There are hints of a better movie hidden somewhere here, some of the more intimate moments, where Dom and Yas are given a little room to breathe in front of the camera, come off as genuine and real.