Rye Lane (2023)

Before Sunrise wishes it was this. I know that's a big swing, but I stand by it, and if you've seen Rye Lane you probably know exactly what I mean.

The setup is about as familiar as it gets: two bruised twenty-somethings collide by chance somewhere in South London, spend a day drifting through the city together, and gradually let their guards down. You know where it's going. The beats arrive more or less on schedule. There's a moment around the midpoint where you think, right, here comes the complication, and sure enough, there it is. Predictable? Absolutely. Does it matter? Barely.

Because here's the thing about formula: when it's executed with this much warmth and energy, it stops being a limitation and starts feeling like a familiar song you're happy to hear again. Rye Lane knows exactly what it is. It's not trying to reinvent anything. It's trying to charm you, and it succeeds.

The lion's share of the credit for that goes to the two leads. David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah are simply magnetic together. Their banter crackles, their silences say as much as their words, and their vulnerability feels earned rather than performed. You're rooting for them almost immediately, which in a film like this is really the whole game. If the chemistry doesn't spark, nothing else can save it. Here, it more than sparks.

Director Raine Allen-Miller shoots South London like she's genuinely in love with it, and that feeling is infectious. The markets, the side streets, the cramped flats and bustling high roads, it all comes alive on screen. Wide lenses turn narrow alleyways into something almost playful, and the colour palette is joyfully saturated without ever tipping into artificiality. This is a film that understands how deeply place shapes the way people feel around each other. The city isn't dressing. It's doing real work, pushing these two people together, giving them things to react to, giving us things to look at between the emotional beats.

I'll be honest: the script isn't flawless. There are moments where a joke doesn't quite land, or where the dialogue reaches a little too hard for quotability. And the ending, while satisfying, wraps things up with a neatness that some will find a touch too comfortable. I didn't mind it. By that point, I was invested enough that I just wanted them to be okay, and that's a credit to how much goodwill the film had built up.

What I keep coming back to is how rare it is to watch a British rom-com that feels this alive and this specific. So much of the genre defaults to a sort of blandly universal Londonness, all tourist-friendly landmarks and vaguely posh protagonists. Rye Lane is neither bland nor universal. It's rooted in a very particular part of a very particular city, and that specificity is where a lot of its personality comes from.

Three and a half stars.

It won't rewrite the genre, and it isn't trying to. But it's funny, it's warm, it moves well, and it finishes before it outstays its welcome. Sometimes that's more than enough. The oldest stories are still worth telling when someone tells them with this much genuine affection and flair.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 2023  | Watched: 2026-04-02

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus · ITVX Premium
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More with David Jonsson: The Long Walk (2025) · Alien: Romulus (2024)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More romance: The Eagle (1925) · The Last Picture Show (1971) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928)