A few months ago, a series of paparazzi photos revealed that an upcoming movie starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet would include a scene of them kissing. Because I chose not to put in the effort and look up what the movie was actually about, I assumed the two award-winning thespians were starring in some sort of handsomely made English drama about, oh, two grief-stricken intellectuals who fall in love after their spouses are, I don’t know, murdered during some sort of tragic incident in London?
It’s an easy enough scenario to imagine, really. They—let’s call them Bennett and Grace—meet at a memorial service (the movie could even be called Memorial Service) for the victims of whatever the tragedy was, there are sparks, they they feel guilty for spending so much time together, and people start gossiping, but they fuck anyway and it’s good and cathartic and maybe a little beautiful but not sustainable and the movie ends with them realizing a relationship will never work but they’re happy to have shared this moment of their lives together. That sounds like a reasonable assumption to make after seeing three or four set photos right?
Maybe! But that’s not what the movie is actually about. Its story, based on a novel by Charles Martin, in no way resembles the one I imagined, and is actually about an English man and American woman (I love when Kate whips that accent out of her toolbox) who meet in an airport after their flights are canceled. Desperate to get home (Elba, because he’s an important surgeon, and Winslet, because she’s getting married the next day), they agree to charter some tiny little plane which ultimately crashes on a mountain, leaving them both to fend for themselves in the snow-covered wilderness along with a dog of questionable origin that has somehow survived the impact. It’s called, wait for it, The Mountain Between Us.
While my original prediction for the movie was wildly off base, I feel comfortable assuming Winslet and Elba will fall in love before the end credits roll. Why am I so confident, you ask? Oh, because of this:
The Mountain Between Us, also known as The Best Movie of 2017, sexily crashes into theaters in October.