One of the most unique 2025 movie releases I’ve seen this year has to be Oh, Hi! starring internet boyfriend Logan Lerman and The Bear’s Molly Gordon. The independent film from writer/director Sophie Brooks follows a couple, Isaac and Iris, as they go on a remote romantic getaway together. However, while they engage in some sexual bondage play, and Lerman’s Isaac gets handcuffed to the bed, a frustrating truth comes out about their relationship and Iris decides to leave him tied up until he tells her what she wants to hear.
The dark comedy, also co-written by Molly Gordon, works as a rather brilliant take on relationships in this day and age, especially as Iris learns that what she thought was a promising beginning to a long coupling was actually not Isaac’s intention the whole time. One element of the movie that really stuck with me is the use of referencing 1943’s Best Picture winner, Casablanca, throughout the film. WARNING: I’ll be getting into SPOILERS ahead.
Early on in Oh, Hi!, Iris and Isaac talk about their favorite movies, and Iris mentions loving Casablanca. Here’s what Sophie Brooks said about having this detail in the movie the first time it’s mentioned:
It's a movie that Iris has seen in the movie that Isaac hasn't seen. So it's kind of this play on miscommunication. He kind of pretends like he'd seen the movie, but he hasn't seen it. And miscommunication is obviously a big theme of the movie. These two people acting like they are being very clear with each other without actually doing that.
I didn’t think about it this way, but as the writer/director shared with me during our interview, Casablanca helps establish the theme of miscommunication from the movie. In terms of the movie, Iris is a big fan of it, but Isaac only pretends to have seen it. It sort of plays into the pair’s relationship, where Iris kind of plays along with Isaac because she likes him, but he is leaving things unsaid that are uncomfortable for him.
I felt like the use of Casablanca helped underline how Iris is conditioned to romanticize relationships that haven’t even had a chance to start and really be something real. She assumed she and Isaac had something they didn’t have, and even after she ties him up to a bed, and he tells her that he doesn’t want a relationship at the end of the film, she quotes the movie, saying “We’ll always have 'Oh, hi!'” As Brooks continued:
Casablanca is such a romantic, sweeping movie, but it's also not where the two people end up together… And I think that's a beautiful love story too. Just because the two people don't end up together doesn't mean it's not a love story. So, I wanted to explore that.
Oh, Hi! and Casablanca certainly have an ending somewhat in common, considering they don’t end up together. But, the fact that Iris sees a situation where she was lied to and almost went to jail as the kind of time and place to recite a line from a heartbreaking movie like Casablanca is certainly telling.
At the same time, as Brooks mentioned, just because two characters don’t end up together at the end doesn't mean a movie cannot be romantic or be its own kind of love story. Having Casablanca as a reference really helped me as a viewer understand that aspect of the film. Because yes, while not every love story is healthy or long-standing, if it made you feel something, it means something to you. We all have those short-lived romances, that weren’t right for us, but taught us something about love and ourselves, and that’s Oh, Hi!
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