This Little Love of Mine
Director: Christine Luby
Writer: Georgia Harrison
Cast: Saskia Hampele, Liam McIntyre, Lynn Gilmartin, Craig Horner, Lawrence Ola, Rajan Velu, Monette Lee, Martin Portus
Seen on: 22.7.2022

Content Note: colonialism

Plot:
Laura (Saskia Hampele) is an up and coming lawyer, hoping to finally become a partner in her lawfirm. When billionaire Graham (Martin Portus) wants to hire her, it looks like she can finally can get everything she ever dreamed off. She grew up with Graham’s grandson Chip (Liam McIntyre) on a beautiful island. Graham needs Chip to take over the company, but Chip won’t sign the necessary paperwork. So Laura flies back home to her island to convince Chip. Once there, she realizes how much she missed home – and Chip.

This Little Love of Mine is a cute RomCom that does exactly what you think it will do. To enjoy it, you have to stomach though that on this tropical island, we can barely see a person of color which is superweird.

This Little Love of Mine is not a great film. It obviously didn’t have much of a budget so there are are barely any people which becomes a little odd when there’s a big party for the billionaire with like 15 guests. Not as odd, though, that apparently the island was almost entirely taken over by white people. There are two PoC in the film, one of whom – Karavi (Lawrence Ola) – may be a Pacific Islander (he barely gets to say a word). As a strong theme of the film is coming home and finding back to your roots, this whiteness is disconcerting, to say the least.

If you’re able to look past that, Laura and Chip are likeable main characters and the story, as tropey and predictable as it is, is sweet. I mean, don’t look at it too closely, or various parts of it will fall apart, but that’s not what these kind of stories are about anyway. The film does deviate from the usual with Laura’s inevitable fiancé Owen (Craig Horner) who makes a surprise appearance on the island, of course. You’d expect him to be an utter dick (the career obsessed big city lawyer), but he is actually not a bad guy, which was quite nice.

I also liked the best friend/comic relief/emotional offloading station Gem (Lynn Gilmartin), and the fact that both Chip and Laura decide for the island independently of their relationship with each other. Not that the relationship isn’t an utter plus.

That is not to say that the film is great or amazing. Nobody will be writing about the greatness of This Little Love of Mine in the years to come, but for a low-budget and rather standard RomCom, it does mostly well (except for the colonialism).

Summarizing: you could watch worse.