When I come across Filipino representation in movies, television, or books, I, as a Filipino American, typically get excited and feel a great sense of pride. But that wasn’t the case when I watched The Love Hypothesis. Instead, I felt confused and conflicted. Now, the lasting impression I have of the Prime Video movie is of its poor handling of Asian representation.
Based on Ali Hazelwood’s book of the same name, The Love Hypothesis is centered on Stanford PhD student Olive Smith. Olive’s best friend, Anh Pham, is a prominent character in the story. In the book, she is of Vietnamese descent. The movie, however, seemingly erases that origin and makes Anh’s ethnicity Filipino.
Presumably, the change was made to be true to Anh’s actress Rachel Marsh, who has Filipino heritage. The change on its own isn’t inherently bad. The movie’s lack of care for Asian cultures and heritages overall, however, is concerning, disrespectful, taints the Filipino representation it does provide.
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The Love Hypothesis Movie Treats Asians as Interchangeable
There’s something honorable in making Anh Filipino for The Love Hypothesis movie to be authentic to Marsh, who did a wonderful job. The change acknowledges who Marsh is and lets her truth be part of the story and her character. But a huge reason why the change doesn’t sit well with viewers, especially Filipinos and Vietnamese, is because The Love Hypothesis didn’t commit to accurate representation.
Is it nice that The Love Hypothesis showed a scene that felt accurate to what Filipino Christmases are like? Sure. Especially because Christmas is THE holiday for Filipinos. Adobo is also a popular Filipino dish, so it makes sense that Olive would get to try it when with Anh’s family. But that doesn’t make the carelessness elsewhere acceptable. It’s 2026. The Love Hypothesis doesn’t deserve praise simply for trying to be diverse.
Anh Pham is a very Vietnamese name, and it’s still the character’s name in the movie despite there being no indication that she is Vietnamese, like in the novel. So by changing Anh’s heritage but keeping her name, the switch feels lazy and ignorant, as though showing a Filipino Christmas is good enough to explain her ethnicity.
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Even worse, these choices make Asians look interchangeable. There are undeniable similarities between Asian countries, especially across Southeast Asia. But we aren’t a monolith. We each have our own distinctions that make us unique within our own cultures. By treating Asians as interchangeable, the movie fails to recognize the history and reality behind different Asian cultures.
Names aren’t just labels to help distinguish people from one another. They’re a way of connecting generations, sharing history, and continuing stories. So it feels egregious to keep Anh’s name just because of the book.
There’s also the matter of the lantern scene. A lot of viewers have expressed love for the heartfelt moment between Anh and Olive, because it’s a powerful, emotional showcase of female friendship. Unfortunately, the lack of authenticity pulled me out of what was meant to be a touching scene. Why? Because I and other Filipinos don’t recognize that as one of our traditions.
It’s not something my family did when my lola died 20 years ago, when my teenaged nephew died by suicide four years ago, or when my lolo died two years ago. We have traditions for the passing of a loved one, but a floating/flying lantern isn’t one of them. So, while that might be a tradition somewhere, it isn’t a Filipino one like the movie implies. It’s as though they felt it was okay to incorporate such an act just because it seems “Asian,” showing the error in viewing Asians monolithically.
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How The Love Hypothesis Movie Could Have Done Anh’s Filipino Heritage Justice
If The Love Hypothesis really wanted Anh to be Filipino, her name could have been changed. Whether her legal first name or a nickname, Ann/Anne pronounced with a short “a” would have been a fair alternative. This would have made the name familiar enough for readers, kept the pronunciation similar to the original Vietnamese name, and stayed true to the Filipino pronunciation of Ann/Anne. From there, a different last name that feels true to her Filipino heritage could have been decided — perhaps with input from Marsh herself.
A lot of Filipinos don’t even have Filipino surnames. Many of us, including my mom’s family, have Hispanic last names like DeGuzman or Lopez because of Spanish colonization. Meanwhile, my last name comes from the Filipino Chinese ancestry on my dad’s side. That makes Anh’s last name of Pham even more confusing for Filipinos. Because we might recognize her last name as Asian, but it doesn’t feel familiar to the Filipino culture we supposedly share.
An argument could be made that changing something as important as a name dishonors the source material. But The Love Hypothesis movie is an adaptation of the book. It’s not a direct one-to-one recreation of the book. When Anh’s ethnicity was changed, making any other alterations to suit that choice became fair game — including her name.
The heart of what makes Anh an important, impactful character is her loyalty, compassion, and support as a friend. Even if her ethnicity doesn’t change any of that, her ethnicity isn’t less important. Fictional character or not, a person’s heritage is a part of their identity.
This isn’t a character who is detached from her heritage or unfamiliar with her culture. The Christmas scene was proof of that, and it’s established early on. Anh’s family’s home has Christmas lanterns called parols hanging in the window, and those are unapologetically Filipino. They’re something I grew up with and still look forward to seeing at my family’s home every year during the Christmas season. To those who are unfamiliar with parols, they were perhaps just a nice Christmas decoration. For Filipinos like myself, they were a clear indicator that the house was a Filipino home.
That detail was just one example of how the movie takes the time to show that Anh is Filipino. Meanwhile, the script literally tells us that when Olive calls her best friend “a very stubborn Filipino woman.” So it’s obvious that The Love Hypothesis movie makes no qualms about embracing Anh’s Filipino heritage and that they made a conscious choice.
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Anh’s Filipino Representation Doesn’t Feel Like a Win for Diversity
Keeping Anh’s name from the book is also disrespectful to Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese name looks good for representation on the surface, but is it actually representation? Or is it misrepresentation and ignorance? Vietnamese people see this name that is familiar to them, but that’s where the familiarity ends. Because the representation begins and ends there. Or rather, it never existed to begin with.
Anh is described as a Filipino woman, and she’s shown to celebrate Christmas in a Filipino manner, so her name becomes this misleading label. It would be like referring to any Asian soup dish as ramen even if the dish in reference is actually pho. You can’t just use any Asian name and deem that it’s okay because it’s close enough to being correct. That’s part of what makes the Filipino representation in The Love Hypothesis feel off-putting.
Choosing to keep Anh’s name gives the impression that she’s Vietnamese. It’s certainly what I expected when I saw the name spelled as such in the movie’s subtitles. It’s also why I was surprised when adobo was mentioned during the Christmas scene. Because, as far as I knew, the Vietnamese community doesn’t also have a dish named adobo. Then I realized Anh’s Christmas sounds and looks a lot like my family’s Christmases because she’s Filipino like me — even if her name doesn’t look like it.
Because The Love Hypothesis fails to handle Anh’s cultural background with proper care, the Filipino representation the movie offers feels like it comes at the expense of Vietnamese representation. That’s not the kind of representation anyone should want, and it’s not the kind of representation any media should strive for. Because it doesn’t feel good or right to uplift yourself when it also insults and disrespects others.
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Could Anh Potentially be Vietnamese in The Love Hypothesis Movie?
The decision to keep Anh’s name as is could arguably be because she is still Vietnamese. The Love Hypothesis movie makes it clear that Anh is Filipino, but that doesn’t necessarily negate the possibility of her having mixed Filipino and Vietnamese heritage.
In fact, the Philippines has a Vietnamese village on the island of Palawan. According to UNHCR Philippines, its origins go back to 1975, when refugees were fleeing the Vietnam War. Some refugees remained in the Philippines long-term and helped establish the Viet Ville community.
While that history could help make for an intriguing backstory for Anh and her family, it’s still an issue. Because, if Anh is still Vietnamese, it leads to even more questions that show what makes the Asian representation in The Love Hypothesis movie problematic.
Why isn’t her Vietnamese side featured in the film? Why does the movie emphasize only her Filipino side? Even if her Filipino side gets more attention, at least acknowledging her Vietnamese side would make it evident instead of erased. If she has a Vietnamese name, then wouldn’t that part of her heritage seemingly be important enough for her family to partake in Vietnamese cultural traditions? If her Vietnamese family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, then why wouldn’t the writers at least make it a point to refer to Anh as a Filipino Vietnamese woman?
If viewers are going to come up with headcanons, it shouldn’t be to fix glaring issues the creative and production teams didn’t bother to address. Asians shouldn’t have to rely on headcanons to give ourselves accurate representation in the media. No one should.
Letting Anh be of explicitly mixed Filipino and Vietnamese heritage in the movie could have been the best of both worlds. It could have been a good way to honor the source material while recognizing Marsh’s background. But there’s no good reason to believe she is. And there’s no reason viewers should have to come up with that detail themselves. Because, if Anh is Filipino and Vietnamese in the movie, there were easy ways to make that known.
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Issues with Asian Representation Isn’t New for American Media
The conflation of Filipino and Vietnamese ethnicities in The Love Hypothesis movie may not have been intentional. But Hollywood has a concerning trend of treating Asians as an interchangeable monolith. This movie is just a recent example amongst a collection of projects that have committed the same error.
In The Good Place, Manny Jacinto’s character Jason Mendoza has a great line that highlights this ongoing problem: “And by the way, everyone here thinks I’m Taiwanese — I’m Filipino. That’s racist.” It perfectly captures how limited and often stereotypical people’s perception of Asia and Asians are.
So much of Asian representation in media really just focuses on East Asians, like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Both movies have been important for Asian representation in general, but both have also helped further reinforce the idea that East Asian representation is the same as Asian representation. Raya and the Last Dragon was important for being a Southeast Asian-inspired film, but it also treated Southeast Asia as monolithic by featuring an amalgamation of Southeast Asian cultures. It fails to distinguish what makes each one unique and avoids formally recognizing specific countries.
In The Love Hypothesis movie, we see them bring authentic Filipino culture into the narrative and act like it’s something to celebrate. It’s fine for Filipinos to enjoy the representation that the film got correctly. But the underlying reality is it also disrespects and erases the Vietnamese heritage embedded into the character’s history. The Vietnamese community deserves better, more legitimate representation than that. Failing to recognize that hinders progress when it comes to Asian representation in media.
The Love Hypothesis is streaming on Prime Video.
