Amazon Prime’s “Picture This” captures love in an honest way 

The latest movie installation by Amazon Prime has not only an amazing cast but storyline and theme of love as well. 

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the movie “Picture This” on Amazon Prime  

“Picture This”: Simone Ashley, who is notoriously known for her role as Kate Sharma in Netflix’s “Bridgerton” and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, playing Harry Styles reincarnated in the “After” movie series, star in a rom-com as fatal exes who can’t avoid each other. 

Ashley stars as Pia, a photographer in London who is about to enter her 30s and is being pestered by her family to get married. While Pia wishes to focus on her blossoming photography career, she is told by a guru that she will find the love of her life within the next 5 dates she goes on. As Pia goes on these dates and meets a variety of different men, such as a Nepo Baby to her mom’s employee, she can’t erase the thought of her first love, Charlie (Fiennes-Tiffin) from her mind. With Pia’s sister’s wedding coming up, she has to find the perfect match as her date. 

Going into this movie, I didn’t have that many expectations, since most 90-minute movies on streaming platforms get straight to the point, which is to entertain the viewer with a familiar plot-line. But what did surprise me was how much I enjoyed watching this familiarity, a movie I’ve basically seen many times as a young woman who considers herself a hopeless romantic. The main difference was I finally got to see a woman who looks like me falling in and out of love, in the ways I would only see white actors do on screen.  

Just like any other rom-com movie on a streaming platform, it was short, simple, and sweet. The cult classic rom-coms, such as “10 Things I Hate About You”, “(500) Days of Summer”, and “13 Going on 30” are what most viewers consider the standard for the genre, and seeing “Picture This,” I was able to reimagine familiar tropes but with my own culture and people. 

What made this movie personal to me was seeing the complicated relationship that Pia has with her family, especially her parents’ relationship with how the outside world perceives them. Oftentimes in South Asian culture, there is an expectation for women to be married by a certain age and only seen as truly successful when they finally get married, but this movie turns that notion upside down and shows us how a woman’s livelihood can be defined by much better and brighter things. 

This year has seen and will see more South Asian stars in mainstream media, such as the horror film “Monkey Man” starring Dev Patel and recently produced Netflix show “Running Point” created by Mindy Kaling. In the years to come, we will be seeing even more South Asian actors and producers creating media that is representative of the South Asian diaspora, which represents the people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives who live outside their country of origin, as well as their true culture.  

While this movie contained many of the cliche tropes in rom-com movies, such as the gay best friend or the ex that keeps reappearing in your life, it was refreshing to see the faces of those stars be brown instead of the usual white. Seeing how Pia interacted with her mom and sister, such as when her mother tugs on her ear as punishment or still tells her what to do at her grown age of 30, reminds me of the chaotic dynamic of South Asian families, quite similar to what I go through with my own family. As toxic as it may sound, South Asian parents come from a place of love, but do not translate it into affection or moral parenting ways, which results in our generational trauma, which Pia definitely has a lot of…

This movie wasn’t anything new or critical when it comes to the world of rom-coms, it follows the similar trope of the hero’s journey, making mistakes and ending up with the love of your life by the end, but that’s what is so good about this movie–it takes on the usual tropes we see with white actors and transforms them for brown spaces. While this movie was seemingly average and “nothing new,” it was memorable in the sense of a new era of diversity and talent making waves on our screens.  

Having Fiennes-Tiffin take a smaller role in this film that is mainly about a woman reclaiming her independence and figuring out where she fits in the world of her Indian family, which is refreshing and showcases that while Tiffin is known for his heart-throb roles as a protagonist, he too can step aside for new storylines to be told. Fiennes-Tiffin himself has generally played the same character in his movie career thus far, such as the pensive, tortured, heartthrob love interest of the protagonist, and he delivered exactly what I expected from him. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and believe that it has once again reassured viewers that Simone Ashley is an It Girl in film right now, and she should not be compared to the allure and attractiveness of previous white female rom-com leads, because while both can be entertaining and talented at the same time, Ashley is making strides for brown girls to feel beautiful and represented as well. 

One thing that sticks with audiences is the relatability of the characters, storyline, and plot development of a film or TV show. This is virtually the case with “Picture This,” as I found myself laughing or rolling my eyes thinking about how South Asian family members can be crazy, but they come from a deep place of love. 

Audience reactions to this movie were nothing but humorous and supportive. User @themediumplace on X wrote, “Simone Ashley said she lost out on roles she was close to getting because studios didn’t think women who looked like her could fill theater seats. Her response? She produced and is the lead in Picture This, which is now the #1 movie on Prime!”

Another X user @itbgal wrote, “i just watched picture this and simone is amazing but i felt zero chemistry with that man so i didn’t really enjoy the movie”

Many viewers could argue that there was in fact no chemistry between the stars, but that’s simply not the point. In my opinion, seeing someone that looks like me go through the age-old tropes in rom-coms was the point; I finally got to see the brown girl pick between men, instead of being the butt end of the joke.

I’m looking forward to picturing many more Brown actors on our screens in Western media, portrayed in a realistic, empowering way, and throwing out the usual stereotypes and tropes that don’t fit us anymore, and quite frankly, never did. 

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