Day 95: He Said She Said

"That's why God made other women. Because no matter how good a woman is, just around the corner may be a better one."

The romantic comedy, and romance genres in particular, are always a tricky genre. It's always predictable for the most part. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and then they break up with the most probable possibility of getting back together. So what I ask for in a romantic comedy is not much. I don't even ask for that much humor. The truth is, the deeper you delve into the emotions of the characters, the more effort people try to put in convey the actual love that exists in the relationship on screen, the more serious the movie will be. I've never been in love, though I know it exists because I read Romeo & Juliet. Despite my inexperience on the matter, I can't really say that love itself is funny. It's complicated, kinda stupid, but not really funny. And the more a movie tries to show people in love, the less funny it'll be. So what I want from a romantic comedy? A little innovation.

Simply being in the genre requires a light hearted love story. But I don't really ask for laugh-out-loud humor. If a romantic comedy can make you laugh but is not that funny to begin with, then it's pretty realistic. People aren't that funny to begin with, and when it comes to drama people really aren't that serious either. So in a romantic comedy I just want some experimenting. Take for example, Annie Hall. This is probably one of the funniest romantic comedies I've ever seen, but it's not a simple love story. It breaks the formula. It starts off with Woody Allen basically giving a stand-up performance and then I think the first scene is him in the middle of the relationship going to see a Holocaust movie. So they've already met, and we've established they have problems. Later on he'll go back to how they met, and then move to the breakup, and the get back together, and all that bullshit. But from the way it starts, it's already different from all the other romantic comedies that were around at that time. The innovation comes into play later. There's a nice use of split screen technology, but the biggest treat is the editing.

So now let's come to He Said She Said. The film begins with the two main characters on a television set (image above), and after he gives his monologue, she abruptly throws a cup at his head. Well why did this happen? Well we'll recap and show that. But it's only from his point of view. After the recap is over and we come back to the very beginning, we're still only half way into the film. What's next? Well, we recap the story from her point of view. I found this to be pretty cool. Perception is always key in a love story. (Why would Romeo kill himself if he hadn't though Juliet was dead? But if he was an objective audience member like us he would have seen that it was just the potion! Ahhh...stupid Romeo!) Some romantic comedies only tell it from one point of view (like (500) Days of Summer, and Manhattan), and some periodically move in and out (like Annie Hall). It usually depends on the audience but for the most part, generic romantic comedies tend to tell each story without endorsing one point of view as fully as they should (like Guess Who with Bernie Mac or something).

This is the innovation I want! Seeing the same scenes twice, but from a different perspective, makes you pretty much see two different films. Characters are either more benevolent, or more insidious. Promises are made with more reverence than we though before, and "coincidences" are explained. The explanation for the "coincidences" was one of the best advantages of the dual perspective.

Kevin Bacon's character provides ample room for this to proceed, but Bacon plays him so great that if I were watching the movie only from his point of view, I'd have seen enough to get a fair impression. He plays a handsome womanizer whom we know is a jerk, yet he's pretty cool. In the second half though, he comes off as just a really nice guy, even though she knows who he is. When you suggest a movie for someone to walk, I don't think you're supposed to be critical of the film but I'm not sure I can say the same for Elizabeth Perkins though. If there is a drawback to this dual mode of storytelling, it's that both characters have to be equally engaging. I was interested very much in the first half because of Bacon (whom I don't remember sounding so squeaky), but Perkins sometimes falls off. But not to worry, Bacons in a lot of the second half to save the day anyway. In the first half, Perkins comes across as a feminist who happens to be very critical of Bacon. (Bear in mind reader, criticism and feminism aren't synonyms though it may appear so.)

In the second half of the film, she just comes across as a woman who thinks she's fallen for the wrong guy. Which is odd since the wrong guy is turning out to be the right guy, so any criticism she seems to have just sort seems to look petty and arbitrary. She starts to look high strung and out of control. Yet, I guess it balances out the original sleazy opinion we'd have of Bacon's character, Dan Hanson, who was three-timing his ex-girlfriend.

Good romantic comedies are hard to find and when you do find one, you probably came across it by accident. For example, I came across (500) Days of Summer when I was at the movie theater, just came out of my second film that day, my dad didn't pick me up, so then I figure, "Why not sneak it? It just started!" It turned out to be great! Caught "Conversations with Other Women" on TV, turned out to be great. This movie, I found while looking for another movie by the same director, Sexual Life which was supposed to be based on the play, La Ronde. (But thanks to the beauty of "six-degrees-of-Wikipedia," I came across a better adaptation of it: Choose Me.)

But when you do find one, you wanna spread it around. There's no doubt that a romantic comedy is hard to write. The comedy genre in particular is probably harder than any other genre though it's effect may be more minimal than the others. That's unless you do it right. A good movie makes you feel something, and then makes you think. The end of Of Mice and Men made me cry (big time), because of Malkovich (much respect to him), but the drama itself makes you think about the characters and their motives, and the situations they find themselves in, which are mostly determined by economic forces. A good romantic comedy should try to do the same. The emotion should be natural because of the comedy, but the "thinking" part should come with a little innovation. When Harry Met Sally is the best example of this. Can men really be friends with women?

Romantic comedies also live and die by the dialog, which is what you want to watch them for. A romantic comedy without good dialog isn't really a romantic comedy at all. (Tarantino should do one. But it would most likely include guns and murder plots. Oh wait, that's Intolerable Cruelty. Not bad actually.) He Said She Said lives up to good dialog and then complements it with what I think is good chemistry by the characters, and great cartoonish performances that remind you of the 1930s. I mean, would a guy who looks like Kevin Bacon really end up Perkins? (Well he is married to that chick from The Closer...) I think so. I think the dialog displays enough to make her interesting so that he would even be remotely interested. So as a romantic comedy, I think it delivers, and with interest. (Fuck you if you think that's corny, I was trying to tie it in with the line be--fuck you, never mind.)

[Another good romantic comedy with "dual perception" would be Conversations with Other Women. It's almost CERTAINLY where they got some of the inspiration for (500) Days of Summer. I know when I was watching the "reality" and "expectations"-split, I couldn't help but keep think of that film. Besides, Aaron Eckhart, and Bonham Carter's great in it.]