Picture This Review: Millenials & Their Growing Pains

Prarthana Mohan’s Picture This is a fun enough romantic comedy that benefits from Simone Ashley’s performance and an identity of its own.

But at the same time, it’s also what makes Picture This feel a bit generic, like a format rather than an actual narrative. It’s not bad, but I don’t think it will turn into a classic of the genre either.

Picture This’ protagonist is British Indian photographer Pia (an excellent Simone Ashley, of Sex Education and Bridgerton). We know she’s a disaster because, despite having moved to her dream city (London) and being undeniably talented, she’s swimming in debt, seems incapable of turning her studio (which she owns with her Gay Best Friend™, Jay, played by Luke Fetherston) into a success, and arrives late to a meeting with her family, wearing flip-flops and losing one of them on the way.

It turns out, Pia’s little sister Sonal (Anoushka Chadha) is about to get married, which means the former needs a date to attend all the events related to the latter’s Big Night. Thus, her family concocts an interesting plan: she will go on five blind dates with five different guys, and according to a local palm-reader, she will find her soulmate in one of those men. Unfortunately, this situation is made more complicated when her first boyfriend, Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), arrives, having been asked to be the groom’s best man. His presence and the difficulties Pia encounters at the dates will make her face her problems and realise she needs her life to change.

Even though Picture This is supposed to be a romantic comedy, I didn’t find it to be particularly romantic. This is because it doesn’t even try to develop a credible romance between Pia and Charlie; they’ve known each other for ages, and thus, don’t have to go through the usual motions, trying to get to know each other in order to fall in love. Taking a look at the movie’s poster, one might assume Picture This would be all about Pia and Charlie, but that’s not the case. And funnily enough, although the film could’ve been more romantic tone-wise, I didn’t mind its rather strange narrative decisions in the end.

That’s because Picture This ends up being all about Pia. It’s about her growing as a human being, realising she has to take advantage of her potential and considerable talents, and that being strong doesn’t necessarily mean being alone all the time. Thus, the five dates she goes on serve as a sort of trial, making her realise that she might be looking for romantic connections in the wrong places. She starts the movie as a difficult and, yes, disastrous young woman, but by the end, she has grown both personally and professionally, which also allows her to solve some of the problems her family members have been struggling with for a while.

None of this would have worked without Simone Ashley’s performance. Simply put, she’s brilliant, portraying Pia as someone unable to let go of the past, and who’s been too demanding in certain aspects of her life and too relaxed in others. She’s vulnerable enough but she’s strong too, which makes Pia an incredibly flawed protagonist worth rooting for. The movie itself might not be amazing, but this is the kind of performance that, in a fair world, should turn Ashley into a star. The secondary performances are all solid, but Picture This belongs to Simone Ashley. In any case, since the story doesn’t focus on its supposed central romance, Hero Fiennes Tiffin ends up being wasted. He looks the part and is charismatic too, but we don’t learn enough about Charlie for him to turn into a memorable character.

Now, considering Picture This is a remake of another English-language film that’s barely a year old, there have got to be more reasons to watch this new version, right? Well, apart from having a great central performance, the film manages to differentiate itself from Five Blind Dates by emphasising the context in which it takes place. For example, Pia has to struggle against the expectations set by her family; after all, she’s a thirty-something single Indian woman with a crumbling business. Thankfully, though, the movie manages to shy away from some of the clichés we could expect from this. For example, Pia’s mum isn’t portrayed as a traditional older woman obsessed with marriage, but as a rather progressive mother who’s also trying to look for love after being divorced for fifteen years.

Thus, even though Picture This ends up being pretty predictable in a narrative sense, at least it manages to do something novel with the way it portrays Indian culture, as well as the way Pia interacts with her family. There’s a struggle between her roots and her status as the daughter of immigrants, and although the film doesn’t do anything particularly dramatic or profound with this, at least it’s there. It’s interesting, for example, seeing her interacting with Akshay (Nikesh Patel, of Artemis Fowl and Starstruck), a British Indian friend who also has to conform to his family’s expectations regarding marriage. 

In the end, I was rather surprised by Picture This. I wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary, and although it certainly could have been funnier and more romantic, it does work as a story about a young and talented daughter of immigrants finding her place in the UK. Nikita Lalwani’s script does a good job at avoiding certain clichés (Jay’s status as the Gay Best Friend™ doesn’t feel cartoonish or offensive, for example), some of the situations are amusing (especially one of Pia’s dates with the son of a billionaire) and of course, the film overall benefits from Simone Ashley’s charming performance. Picture This is fun enough, but I just hope it will allow Ashley to find bigger and better roles in the near future.

Picture This is now available to watch globally on Prime Video.