52 Films by Women Vol 5. 24. ROMANTIC COMEDY (Director: Elizabeth Sankey)
‘I am standing at
the altar about to be married. Little do I know that the love of my life is
racing towards the church on horseback. I am an advertising executive, and I
fall for a charming man. Only he is also in advertising – a rival.’
OK. These are not
exact quotes. However, they illustrate British musician turned film essayist
Elizabeth Sankey’s voiceover at the start of Romantic Comedy, a
consideration of the tropes of the one Hollywood genre aimed squarely at women.
Her basic point is that, for all the contrivances and bad messages that they
contain, ‘rom coms’ move us because they give us that most human connection,
when two people who might otherwise not know each other, kiss. It is weird
watching the movie during COVID-19 lockdown, when people are actively
discouraged from meeting someone new. Social relationships are frozen in aspic,
like ‘Dino DNA’ in Jurassic
Park. I wonder if humans will
remember how to socially interact after a vaccine for Coronavirus is found. Or
will we continue to shout ‘two meters’ at one another.
Romantic Comedy is part-clip reel, part-opinion piece. It is
like a podcast with movie clips underneath. You could listen to most of it and
not lose the thread. There are no interviewees talking to camera. Instead,
various contributors talk over the movie clips themselves, occasionally giving
way to allow actual movie dialogue. Sankey, whose band Summer Camp contributes
to the movie’s soundtrack, edits out some of the most notable exponents of the
romantic comedy genre. The biggest ‘rom com’ of 1981 was Arthur, starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli as a rich drunk and the woman
who saves him. In Sankey’s edit, Father
of the Bride about a reluctant
dad (Steve Martin) giving away his daughter, is more of a romantic comedy. As
for Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, without which When Harry Met Sally
would not exist, it has been edited out of movie history altogether owing to
accusations accepted as fact about its maker.
The basic component
of the genre is that two people – usually attractive, usually male and female
and usually but not exclusively white - fall in love on screen. But why are
they so middle class, complains Sankey, neatly forgetting about Maid in Manhattan in which a Hispanic American hotel maid
(Jennifer Lopez) falls for an American politician (Ralph Fiennes). Why are they
not interracial, she asks, neatly forgetting about Maid in Manhattan,
etc. Sankey self-selects to make an argument – sometimes convincingly,
sometimes dredging up straight to DVD (in the UK) movies (The Last Kiss, starring Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson, a
remake of a Gabriele Muccino movie) to stretch a point.
I think that Sankey
should have stuck to popular successes and delineated between teenage romantic
comedies – the entire oeuvre of John Hughes (Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful and Sixteen Candles) doesn’t
get a mention – and adult romantic comedies. Sankey and her mostly British contributors
(Jessica Barden, Anne T. Donahue, Cameron Cook, Charlie Lyne, Laura Snapes and
others) make some good points about some of the movies they skewer, but they
take some short cuts and segues, including to the 2017 British drama, God’s Own Country, that don’t make sense. Personally, I would
have had less Josh O’Connor, more Molly Ringwald.
There is also
something particularly grating about a group of British middle-class voices
complaining that the genre is too middle-class. Hollywood films do not
generally suggest that romance is a way to social advancement – that is a
British thing. In any case, in what sense is Pretty Woman, the
film that made Julia Roberts a star, middle-class?
After an opening that situates Sankey’s love of the genre
back to her teenage bedroom – cue a montage of other teenage bedrooms – she
introduces us to the origins of the genre. In the 1930s, she notes, cinema was
frowned upon as an art form. It became a place where women and immigrants could
make movies. The 1930s romantic comedies showed that women could be the equal
of men – after all, so the saying goes, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred
Astaire did, but backwards; Sankey does not quote this, but it bears repeating.
In the 1940s, women had to support the war effort. By the time of Doris Day
movies, women could have successful careers but were shown to give them up for
a man. Sankey does make an exception – Marilyn Monroe – whose innocent
desirability made men stupid. Sankey does not delve into the narratives of
Monroe movies the way in which she does with The Last Kiss, in
which Zach Braff’s character cheats on his pregnant wife and sits outside the
family home for three days begging forgiveness; commentators wonder how he went
to the bathroom. Instead, she uses a contrasting image to make a point – a
split screen image of Doris Day and Rock Hudson in their respective bathtubs
show how they complement one another.
Sankey is at her most persuasive describing the tradition in
rom-coms of women sublimating their own interests for male pursuits – drinking
and liking sports. The more a woman is like a man, the more he will like her.
She uses the film How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days to make a point. In
it, Andie (Kate Hudson) works on losing her partner Ben (Matthew McConaughey)
by introducing him to her feminine world, in order to discomfort him. This
being a ‘rom com’, they do not split up. The film is based on a study of
male-female behaviours by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long and is better
described as a modernist ‘rom-com’ that co-opts self-help and self-realization
books to reinforce old stereotypes. I confess I tended to avoid movies with
‘how, what, where, why’ in the movie title, since they are not a guarantee of
quality. They promise to answer a question, but you are never satisfied. I make
an exception for ‘when’ – When Harry met Sally, When
Saturday Comes – it is a more reliable interrogative, for the most
part.
Sankey also makes us feel sorry for Cameron Diaz for having
to sing ‘that’ song in The Sweetest Thing in a cafeteria setting
(‘you’re too big to fit in here’). I believe she should get compensation every
time it is played. The film’s screenwriter, Nancy Pimental, did not have
control over the movie’s tone – every gross-out gag (including Diaz’s encounter
with a penis in a glory hole) fell flat. According to the American magazine,
Entertainment Weekly, the film has a cult following, but I am yet to be convinced
it is a good bad movie.
A big part of the Hollywood ‘rom com’ is the declaration,
when the male lead realises that he has made a big mistake and admits his true
feelings, usually in the rain or some unusual location. Commentators remake
that guys really do make that declaration ‘but they never really say what I wanted
them to say’. The point of the declaration is that the kiss stops men from
talking because what they say is squeaky bottom embarrassing.
In an interesting diversion, Sankey notes that romantic
comedies do not win Academy Awards except when they are in disguise. Silver
Linings Playbook is the example, given the veneer of seriousness by the
personality disorder experienced by its male protagonist, Pat Solitano (Bradley
Cooper) and its references to suicide. Many of the tropes of the ‘rom com’ are
present, including the declaration but they are underpinned with dance, betting
and OCD. It was the film that launched Cooper as a romantic lead, exploited in
his self-directed A Star is Born remake.
Praise is heaped on movies Sankey did not see on first
release – Saving Face directed by Alice Wu and Just Wright directed
by Sanaa Hamri as well as the lesbian romantic comedy Kissing Jessica
Stein. For the most part, Sankey focuses on the ‘romantic’ part rather
than the comedy. She has a good take-down of the psychotic behaviour of Sandra
Bullock’s character in While You Were Sleeping, in which a lonely
subway teller pretends to be the fiancée of a businessman (Peter Gallagher) in
a coma. Look at the lies she tells to insinuate herself into a man’s life.
Sankey does not really explore what a good romantic comedy looks like, though
she singles out Ruby Sparks and The Big Sick as
interesting contributions to the genre.
There is a reason that Sankey shows more romance than comedy
– she wants her contributors to add the wit and wisdom. But she does not really
account for why snarky commentators who recognise that the ‘rom com’ is junk
food really believe that the kiss justifies the means. Plus, she does not offer
the essential ingredients of a ‘guilt-free’ romantic comedy, the one that we
can enjoy without believing that it peddles nonsense. I can suggest an answer.
It is the comedy bit of the genre that displaces realism and also gives us
pleasure – those inappropriate situations in which one or other lover finds
themselves in, having to climb out of a window after being in a room that would
compromise their chance of happiness. Displacements are the source of comedy.
The more real a romance is, the less funny it is. However,
the comedy part is essential. Why? Because none of us really believes that
there is just one person who will complete us or be the perfect soul mate. We
do not make love, we make do. The essence of a good relationship is compromise.
Desire always comes into it as do partners who have a quality that we do not
possess – so we want them for their ability to plumb or do the accounts. Of
course, this does not make for escapist entertainment. Unreality with a
piercing recognition factor is the essence of movie joy.
Reviewed on Mubi UK streaming service, Saturday 16 May
2020
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