How to Be Single is an odd title for a Valentine's Day date movie. After all, cupid is supposed to draw back his bow and bring people together, casting single life into oblivion.
But, don’t fret – this film is not all doom and gloom. Christian Ditter’s adaptation of Liz Tuccillo’s novel of the same name follows the romantic escapades of four women in New York, one of whom is Lucy, a hopeless romantic, played by the delightful Alison Brie.
The 33-year-old actress is best known for playing loyal wife Trudy Campbell in the award-winning, 1960s-set drama Mad Men. Watching the moralistic Trudy put up with the dastardly antics of her advertising executive husband, Pete, it would make anyone happy to be solo.
But in How to Be Single, Brie shows her range, playing a very different type of personality – someone who is looking for love, rather than being destroyed by it.
“Lucy is very single, and she has a very type-A personality,” says Brie. “She is happy in work and life but she is really trying to find a husband.”
Lucy’s method of choice to find her ideal man is the internet. At the start of the film, we see her in her New York apartment, trying to log onto neighbours’ Wi-Fi connections. Failing to find a signal, she starts to frequent a local bar where she can get online, and the barman becomes her best friend and confident.
“Lucy’s on about 10 different websites,” says Brie. “She’s very smart, and has developed an algorithm to help her find the perfect man. She’s trying to find a husband in a very impersonal way. She is not going to sit at a bar and meet a guy. She is going to sit at a bar, with a computer, and find the perfect combination.”
Online dating is something that Brie has never tried herself.
“I was hooked up before dating sites came around. I look around now, and think, ‘way too easy’.” She recently got engaged to fellow actor Dave Franco, and when we meet, she is wearing a huge sparkling engagement ring.
Mad Men drew to a close last year, after seven seasons. Brie says of her experience on the hit show, "It was interesting to be on a show for seven years. But what was good about Mad Men is that the characters were continually changing. No character was left underdeveloped."
It was a nice change, though, she says, after being on a TV show, with so many male stars, to be part of a film where the female characters really get to take centre stage.
“It was really fun to be on set with Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann and Rebel Wilson,” she says. “It’s interesting because while I love working on dramatic material, personally I’m not a very serious person – so my personality lends itself more to comedy.”
The Los Angeles-born Brie is fast becoming one of the most sought after actresses in the world. She recently caught the eye of famed British writer Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, who cast her in his upcoming British TV mini-series Doctor Thorne.
“I was excited because Julian was telling me he was a fan and wanted me to do something of his,” she says. “It’s very exciting coming from a theatre background, like I do, where you get to wear interesting costumes. It was the first time I had to wear a corset.”
With her career clearly on the up, and married life looming, Brie seems to have developed an algorithm of her own for the perfect life.
As for How to Be Single, that's a lesson being taught by Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson in a romantic drama that successfully subverts the genre.
• How to Be Single is in cinemas now
artslife@thenational.ae