Living the Romantic Comedy

Great Moments in Romantic Comedy #104

After a brief prologue of humiliation, our heroine returns to her London flat where she'll "finally die, fat and alone, and be found three weeks later, half-eaten by wild dogs..." Which is when the soundtrack music reveals itself to be the opening of the supremely cheesy bathetic power ballad, All By Myself, a pop monument to maudlin-ity (that's country star Jamie O'Neal channeling Celine Dion, who either made the rights to her cover of the Eric Carmen original prohibitively expensive or wasn't up for being made fun of, a mere five years after topping the charts with what our narrator's voice-over subsequently refers to as "sad FM easy-listening for the over-30s").

The 2001 of it is clear in our first view of the apartment, with a boxy cordless landline phone in the foreground of the frame and Frasier (then at the peak of its 11-year run) on the telly, while what's tacitly time-transcendent about the scene is our heroine's quintessential lonely girl getup: red flannel pajamas spotted with white penguins, cigarette in one hand and TV remote in the other, as Bridget Jones sits forlorn on her couch - before popping up briefly to compulsively check for non-existent phone messages.  Then a dissolve brings us into real time, the soundtrack now source music that's playing in her flat.

Bridget's got a rolled-up magazine in her left hand, a glass of red wine in her right - all those cigarette butts in the ashtray on the rug, meanwhile, and an abandoned copy of Holidays in Hell.  Bridget sips, then gulps down the wine, and it feels like a singer's prep for a performance, her body moving subtly in rhythm to the piano figure that sets up the verse - and we cut in for a close shot to catch the grimace on actress Renee Zellweger's face as the full force of that undoubtedly cheap red vino hits her. 

It's the guitar lick that gets her in, using the rolled-up magazine as guitar neck, plucking invisible strings with her glass-in-hand.  When I was young, I never needed anyone... She half-sings along, really hearing this... And making love was just for fun... Those days are gone.  And that line brings her close to tearing up.  In the brief lull that sets up the next line, it seems Bridget Jones has fallen into the great black pit of self-pity.  All by myself, she sings with the singer, yet on Don't wanna be - an unexpected reserve of resistance is suddenly manifest - All (finger point left) by (finger point center) my (finger point right, now with her other arm flung out) - self, any- more - !

Here, arms spread, really owning it, Bridget becomes the singer, triumphantly belting - and then she's the drummer, beating tom-toms and cymbal with both hands on the drum fill into that soaring, torchy chord reached under the pop-operatic peak of the long-held moooore...! 

And as we cut back to the wide shot, it's certainly no accident that the writing credits come up (Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies, Richard Curtis), just as Bridget Jones, arms akimbo in her red flannel pjs, magazine-microphone in hand, embodies, as director Sharon Maguire put it on her DVD commentary, "feeling sorry for yourself and rather enjoying yourself at the same time," because what could be more of a perfect female wish-fulfillment fantasy than this meta-moment: not merely sorry me, but Based on a novel by - !  Now on the big screen!

In this moment, the apogee of illicitly enjoyable angst, that sweet spot where pop music and romantic comedy merge - it's the bittersweet pain we love to celebrate, laughing at the sheer over-the-top indulgence of it all - Bridget/Renee, singer and drummer and song at once, kicks into another chorus with her rock star couch potato white-socked foot, over the title: BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY. 

All - by - myself! she belts, glorying in her puniness, arms wide, one open-palmed hand spread out to that great legion of fans beyond the footlights, while her dumb, squat phone, still plopped on the arm of her armchair is really the only one to hear her... besides the millions of lip-synchers, that is, sitting out here in the dark, for we have met the Singleton, and she is us.

 

Reboot

For the much-beleagured romantic comedy genre, 2011 has already been an intriguing year, with the unexpected success of the female-powered Bridesmaids, a rom-com/comedy hybrid that's turned out to be the most profitable Judd Apatow movie that Apatow didn't write or direct.  And now here's the freshest romantic comedy release in recent memory: Keith Merryman, David A. Newman & Will Gluck's Friends With Benefits.

I spent nearly the entirety of watching Benefits either literally or figuratively sighing with relief.  Finally, a dynamic relationship between two believable, complicated human beings, featuring the kind of strong, fully-dimensional female rom-com lead that I've been wanting to see for years (You go, Mila Kunis), and a male lead who's secure enough to play soft (Justin Timberlake rocks).  Finally, a gay character in the buddy role who's not a stereotypical caricature, but a credible and funny creation (Thank you, Woody Harrelson). 

At last, real crackling chemistry between the two lovers, and LOL true-to-life sex scenes that move the plot forward and develop character.  The sort of zingy, so smart-you-have-to-pay-attention-to-catch-it all dialogue that's been largely missing from the screen since the screwball era ended. A structure that feels organic instead of strained and contrived, that even when it's hitting familiar beats,  imbues them with enough honesty to make the construct seem convincing.

As an added dividend for both lovers and haters of this maligned movie genre, it's all topped by a witty meta-level of reflexive parody; this is a movie that manages to knowingly send up half of the hoary clichés of the romantic comedy while being unabashedly a romantic comedy to its core.  Friends With Benefits is the first rom-com in a long time that requires no apologies.  You can enjoy it without guilt, because it has the courage to appeal to your intelligence instead of pandering to your sentimentality.

Credit goes to the above writers (Harley Peyton also gets a story nod), while the two stars reportedly had some input, which may in part account for the consistently naturalistic charm of their scenes together. Cast to perfection (Richard Jenkins really ought to be declared a national treasure), paced with welcome assurance, this isn't a movie that invites carping.  Sure, it's often visually dull and takes a while to find its rhythm, and yes, it does follow a formulaic paradigm in the end.  But it's such a hit of fresh oxygen to a form that was feeling moribund that I for one am not about to get all nitpicky about it.

Friends With Benefits is no auteurist cinematic classic, but it feels like an authentic reboot for a genre that's been needing a boot in the butt.  If you've been missing the kicks that come from a genuinely clever comedy, hie thee quickly to the multiplex.

From the Belly of the Beast

Some studio development executives, shallow, corrupt, as craven in their bent as the most venal of hedge fund managers, are at their core the most childlike naifs.  The people who work for them come to understand that they believe in tooth fairies.  They will hand a reader what is indisputably a sow's ear and enthusiastically declare it a silk purse worth tens of millions of dollars, because undeterred by an actual story on the page (that bedrock of the Story Department's belief system), they envision a beautiful movie in their mind, and this is the thing they champion.  Like tourists in a foreign country without a map, they believe it's possible to walk from New York to Patagonia, that Patagonia is a paradise, and the galling, infernal thing about these creatures is that every so often, they are right.

-- Pritchard Murphy

Second Chances

If you think every soul has only one mate, chosen by fate, you are a narcissistic fantasist, separated at birth into matching halves, who believes that one person can be enough for another, that you're ready for love just the way you are, and that God (or something like Her) will see to it that you find your lost half, so long as you keep the faith and follow the signs, e.g. the one that says 'Escape,' as opposed to 'Reality.'

Such, in sum, has been the conclusion of the thought-provoking comment-makers on this past week's post re: The One theme in romantic comedies: true believers in there is only one have a cult-member, "it's out of our hands" bent.  Which leads me to the question, What about the rest of us?

As a confessed congenital romantic who's now happily ensconced in his third and final marriage, I have a vested interest in stories that express the other side of the equation, namely: Everyone is capable of finding more than one great love in one's lifetime. 

On the surface, this rom-com sub-genre's ethos may seem even more egoistic (i.e. I'm so uniquely lovable that there are any number of special someones out there for me).  But what The One After the One romantic comedies (e.g. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Holiday, Love Actually) embrace is ultimately a more grounded, pragmatic approach to how one finds a mate. 

While fate may play a part in the process, the belief system tapped into here is a sort of democratic self-actualization.  Sarah Marshall tells you that if you can just like, get over yourself, dude, you'll find that "soul-mates" come in all shapes and sizes; you may even find, romantically heretical as it sounds, a better match than the one you had and lost before.

In this regard, it's notably ironic that in the uber-One romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle, as fellow blogger Rob pointed out (Great minds...), widower protagonist Sam has already had the ostensible great love of his life, in his late wife.  So how is that all signs point to Annie (the Meg Ryan character) as The One who will make him whole?

I think the hybrid nature of One/One After Sleepless points to the essence of what's at the core of these particular constructs.  Sleepless Sam, the Liam Neeson widower in Love Actually, The Holiday's widower Jude Law, the bereft Juliet Stevens widow in Truly, Madly, Deeply - all of these protagonists are learning a lesson about rebirth and regeneration.  Their second chances at love present us with a model for mourning and moving on.

In defiance of the late Kate McGarrigle's lovely lyric (Some say the heart is just like a wheel /Once you bend it, you can't mend it), these polytheistic comedies/dramedies suggest that if you find the courage to pick up the pieces, you can put that essential organ back together again.

In lighter, more upbeat variants where The One Before, however seemingly perfect, is still with us but exposed as fatally flawed (e.g. what the tearful Meg Ryan discovers in Addicted to Love and French Kiss), the meaning is the same.  But perhaps the purest distillation of this trope can be found in the more somber Truly, Madly, whose entire central plot turns on a profound misdirection: The One returns from the dead, only to deliver the message that getting to The One After is the point.

I'm looking for other entries in this sub-genre, as before, and curious to hear your take.  Is the One After  idea tacitly less romantic?  Is this a harder message to hear, in rom-com-land, and thus the relative scarcity of big hits of this ilk?  Living the RomCom wants to know. 

Meanwhile, as Severus Snape helps Harry Potter make world records go up in smoke - here's young Alan Rickman as a most romantic ghost: 

 

Is There Only One?

I've embarked on a new project that explores romantic comedy's operative myths, memes, and moral assumptions, so I'm getting newly analytical about such genre givens, asking: What are these stories of romance that we insist on telling ourselves?  Same old themes, or have they changed over time?  What different beliefs make up the rom-com construct, and do they collude, or contradict each other?

While the genre is clearly founded on one bedrock ethos - love as a positive force and/or transformative power - some of the most beloved movies in the rom-com canon come at the quest for love from very disparate points of view.  One predominant take is what I'll call the "One Love" philosophy, which could be expressed as: Every soul has only one mate, chosen by fate.

Romantic comedies of this kind are essentially about search and retrieval.  They're not really about how one falls in love with somebody, or how a relationship is forged.  They assume that The Perfect Stranger, being somehow preordained for the job, will be a perfect fit for the protagonist - the only obstacle lies in finding her or him.

Such stories, operating in a spirit antithetical to the pop tune "Love the One You're With," put a great deal of faith in Higher Powers - that is, screenwriters and their contrivances.  In an effort to understand how the One Love sub-genre works, I recently took another look at a movie that embodies its ethos, and was kind of amazed at just how fantastical its conceits were: 2001's Serendipity.

Sara (Kate Beckinsdale) is such a believer in fate, that even after spending a perfect evening with perfect-for-her Jonathan (John Cusack), she won't give up her last name or phone number, because the wind snatched away the slip of paper on which she wrote down this crucial info.  If she and he are really meant to be together, she argues, then fate (that would be writer Marc Klein) will bring them together again. 

Sara has Jonathan write his digits on a five dollar bill that she gives to a news vendor, and rewrites her own on the inside cover of a Garcia Marquez book (perversely, it's Love in the Time of Cholera) that she promises to donate to a secondhand book store.  Then she cabs out of there, leaving Jonathan and the bewildered rationalists in the audience to see how, exactly, the game will play out over the remaining two acts.

We're banking on a wrinkled bacteria-laden Lincoln portrait and a book about lung disease to bring these star-crossed not-even-lovers into the ultimate clinch, and what's incredible about the movie (which while not a hit, performed decently in its day) is that it's able to suck you in at all.  But such is the power of The One story, most successfully exemplified by the mega-smash Sleepless in Seattle: some of us romantics, at least, really, really want to believe this... um, stuff - even when real-life evidence offers much in the way of debunking it.

All lovers-in-love enjoy reconstructing the intriguingly strange paths that led them to that fateful encounter with their special someone (e.g. What if I hadn't decided to come to the park that night, what if you hadn't worn that dress?).  But one tends to feel a little differently about such serendipities when one and that special someone have ended up divorced.

The "Love Beyond the One" is another sub-genre, of course, but for now I'm fixated on this one, which is where you folks come in, since I could use a little help.  While I add Next Stop Wonderland and Before Sunset to Sleepless and Serendipity on the short-list (along with Sliding Doors, a variation on the theme),  can you think of another rom-com that fits this category?  Which do you find the most convincing, and why?  Most importantly, do you really buy into The One belief system, in the so-called real world?  Is The One story only meant to be a fairy-tale or metaphor, and if so, what purpose does it serve?

Living the RomCom wants to know, and after collating your responses and my own, I hope to come back to this Subject for Further Research in another post.

 

Rom-Com Truisms #7

To humiliate one of your protagonists is wonderful, but to humilate both is divine.

Love drives us to extremes, and romantic comedy couples caught in the act of loving or denying love are already taking their emotional investments so seriously - or protesting them so fiercely - that they're ripe for major ridicule.

The beautiful thing about this technically terrible bit of business from The Proposal (its contrivances are wincingly clunky) is how it simultaneously turns both of its protagonists into equal objects of abject humiliation: it's a Scene We'd Like to See of primal simplicity.  These two people have spent the entirety of the movie thus far attempting to deny a physical attraction while faking marital intimacy; they're two heads denying the bodies they're attached to, so when body meets body, both leads are reduced to the most amusingly inane protestations:

 

"Why are you naked?!"

"Why are you wet?!"

What else need be said?  This is the essence of romantic comedy horror: we have met the enemy, and it is being human.  It's great when one protagonist is shamed and humiliated, but if you have the opportunity to make both of your leads suffer, pile it on.  From the black & white indignities of Cary and Katherine losing their cool in Bringing Up Baby to the technicolor widescreen food-poisoned exesses of Kristen & co. losing their collective lunch in Bridesmaids, humiliation has always been the coin of the realm in rom-com-land.

Loss of dignity is this turf's delight, so double up on the Passion and its Punishment and your audience's laughs will be twice as loud and long.