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The meet cute is one of the most recognisable and influential generic conventions in all of cinema, yet there is currently no comprehensive theoretical account of how the meet cute functions on a formal and spatial level. This research talk embarks on a formal analysis of the meet cute, emphasising its relationship to urban space and, in particular, the staging of spontaneous, embodied encounters between strangers within these spaces. Drawing from some wide-ranging examples from contemporary genre texts – including sci-fi and horror hybrids such as Palm Springs, Meet Cute and Companion to internet-native rom com texts such as Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date – I subsequently frame the meet cute’s relationship to concepts of ‘programmability’ and ‘exclusivity’, and how the convention is being re-shaped and re-defined by its relationship to the digital. 

This talk is supported by the BAFTSS New Connections scheme. 

Dr Hattie Idle is a Lecturer in Film and Media at York St John University. She received her PhD from University College Dublin in 2025, where her research centred around genre theory, urban cinema, global popular media, and digital media cultures. Her work has been published in The Velvet Light Trap, Film International, and Frames Cinema Journal, and is currently working on her first monograph titled Global Romantic Comedy and the City: Popular Cinema and Urban Space, which will be published by Bloomsbury Press in 2028. Since 2022, Hattie has served as Director and Curator at Samizdat Film Festival - a Glasgow-based festival dedicated to cinema from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

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By: Lawrence Webb
Last updated: Monday, 9 November 2026