All That She Wants takes a premise that could easily become a broad punchline—the thirtysomething woman who wakes up after a hookup and discovers the younger man was once the child she babysat—and asks it to carry more emotional weight than its initial awkwardness suggests. The U.S.-Canada romantic comedy, which runs 95 minutes, stars Annie Murphy as Emma and Cooper Raiff as Luke, an unlikely couple navigating a sizable age difference, family pressure and profoundly different ideas about what adulthood is supposed to look like.
The film had a screening in Los Angeles on Aug. 20, 2026, and is part of the Toronto Film Festival’s Special Presentations lineup. Its title knowingly nods to Ace of Base’s 1992 hit, but the story’s concerns are contemporary: the timelines people impose on women, the practical and emotional urgency of deciding whether to become a parent, and the lingering damage done by chasing an idealized version of a successful life.
That mixture of fizzy setup and serious subject matter makes the movie a natural fit for viewers looking for a romcom with more on its mind than whether two attractive people can get past one misunderstanding before the credits roll. The obstacles are present, certainly. But the larger conflict is Emma’s effort to separate what she genuinely wants from the expectations she has absorbed from everyone around her.
Emma’s life is at a breaking point
Emma is a professional dancer in her early thirties, and her life is not unfolding with the clean certainty she thought it would. Her sister Macy, played by Zosia Mamet, announces a pregnancy. At the same time, Emma’s long-running relationship with Spencer, played by Finn Wittrock, has become impossible to ignore for what it lacks: commitment. Spencer’s self-important manner and refusal to move forward leave Emma confronting the gap between the life she has been maintaining and the one she might actually need.
After the breakup, Emma meets Luke during a night out. He is a graduate student and roughly a decade younger, but the screenplay positions him less as a shorthand for reckless youth than as someone with an unusually gentle, old-fashioned openness. The attraction is immediate, aided by alcohol and the kind of impulsive chemistry romcoms have been calibrating since somebody first slipped on a banana peel near a florist’s shop.
The next morning supplies the movie’s most audacious complication. In Luke’s university dorm room, Emma notices family photographs and realizes that she knew him as a four-year-old. She used to babysit him. To her, he was “Lil Lukey,” which is not a label designed to make a subsequent romantic connection feel relaxed or straightforward.
It is an intentionally cringe-inducing revelation, and the film does not pretend it is not strange. Yet it is not the only issue, or even the most meaningful one. Emma gets past the former-babysitter shock relatively quickly. Her tougher challenge is the private knot of anxiety, perfectionism and fear that has shaped her decisions for years.
A romcom powered by choice rather than a gimmick
David West Read wrote the screenplay specifically for Murphy, whose Emmy-winning work on Schitt’s Creek made her a standout at precise physical comedy and heightened social discomfort. Emma gives Murphy ample room for those skills. The character has a restless, quirky energy that can be exaggerated, but the performance also has to communicate why Luke is drawn to her and why her outward momentum sometimes conceals uncertainty.
Related coverage includes ‘All That She Wants’ Makes an Age-Gap Romcom About Choice and Family.
Emma is not merely worried that people will judge her for dating someone younger. She is also working through her desire to have a baby. A career change offers one possible avenue for rebuilding her identity, but it does not eliminate that wish. Eventually, she begins to consider Luke as a potential sperm donor. He agrees partly because he wants to help and partly because staying close to Emma matters to him.
That arrangement gives the film its real romantic tension. The question is not simply whether an older woman and younger man can become a couple. It is whether Emma can accept affection without trying to control every variable, and whether a relationship first framed in transactional terms can accommodate vulnerability. The movie’s focus on motherhood may invite arguments about what a feminist romantic comedy should prioritize, but it treats Emma’s want as her own rather than reducing it to an instruction from society.
Christine Baranski plays Emma’s mother, an important presence in the character’s internal landscape. Emma’s harsh standards are tied to the perfectionism she learned at home and to her sense that other people have already mapped out the correct sequence for her life. The film covers a period of years through May-to-December time jumps, giving her arc time to become more than a single impulsive weekend or a familiar montage of life repairs.
Murphy and Raiff make the pairing work
The central pairing is the movie’s biggest asset. Murphy brings comic physicality to Emma without letting her become only a collection of mannerisms. She also gets the opportunity to play the character’s gradually deepening self-awareness. The emotional stakes require a more dramatic register than a simple meet-cute vehicle, and Emma’s evolution depends on the audience recognizing the person underneath the performance she puts on for others.
Raiff, meanwhile, has increasingly become associated with stories that explore relationships across an age gap. His feature debut, Shithouse, concerned a college freshman and his sophomore resident adviser, played by Dylan Gelula. In Cha Cha Real Smooth, he played a bar mitzvah party starter whose connection with an older single mother, played by Dakota Johnson, drives the story. All That She Wants gives him another younger-man role, though Luke appears to be his warmest and most accessible romantic lead to date.
Luke’s patience steadies Emma, but the screenplay does not make him a magical solution to every problem she has. The more meaningful movement is Emma learning to anchor herself through purpose and family rather than relying on someone else to authorize her happiness. That balance prevents the age-gap concept from swallowing the rest of the film.
John Gemberling and Bill Irwin are also among the supporting cast, alongside Mamet, Baranski and Wittrock. The ensemble provides the family and relationship context around Emma’s decisions, even as the film keeps its attention trained on the changing dynamic between Emma and Luke.
A familiar surface with grounded emotions underneath
Scarlett Bermingham and Andrew Rhymer direct. Bermingham makes her feature directing debut here, while Rhymer previously co-wrote and co-directed the 2019 wedding comedy Plus One; Bermingham appeared in that earlier film in a supporting role. Their new collaboration gives the movie a polished Toronto setting and an intentionally approachable romcom sheen. Cinematographer Robert Scarborough captures a bright, tidy city backdrop, while editors Jamie Kennedy and Matt McBrayer shape the story’s jumps through time. Matthew O’Halloran composed the music.
Its visual presentation may initially seem conventional, but the characters keep it from feeling disposable. The title track reference is both inevitable and integral to the premise, and the film uses the song’s cultural baggage—the pop nostalgia, the teasingly judgmental assumptions about a woman who knows what she wants—to frame a more generous story. Emma is allowed to want romance, a child, meaningful work and an imperfectly lived life. None of those desires cancels another out.
The timing also places the film in a cultural moment increasingly receptive to older-woman/younger-man romances. That dynamic has appeared across recent pop culture and films including Babygirl and I Want Your Sex. Here, however, the age difference is only one strand in a broader consideration of reproductive choices, familial expectations and the awkward fact that maturity does not arrive on a universal schedule.
For viewers following Toronto’s festival slate, the film joins a program that also includes major stage-to-screen and music-focused titles; Cynthia Erivo’s Prima Facie world premiere is another notable event connected to the festival.
Key details for ‘All That She Wants’
- Directors: Scarlett Bermingham and Andrew Rhymer
- Screenwriter: David West Read
- Cast: Annie Murphy, Cooper Raiff, Zosia Mamet, Christine Baranski, John Gemberling, Bill Irwin and Finn Wittrock
- Runtime: 95 minutes
- Languages: English
- Production: Ley Line Entertainment and Babe Nation Films
- Festival placement: Toronto Film Festival, Special Presentations
All That She Wants works because it understands that the biggest source of romantic chaos is not necessarily an alarming age gap or a mortifying childhood nickname. It is the pressure to have every answer before deciding to live. Murphy and Raiff’s rapport gives that realization a likable, emotionally credible center, turning an extremely awkward morning-after discovery into a story about choosing a future on one’s own terms.
