In troubled emotional times, I tend to retreat to the uncomplicated, the easy, the predictable. Last weekend, I watched a romantic comedy, but not the latest cookie-cutter Hollywood rom-com. This film was from France.
Rom-coms are one of the most predictable story-types in an art form that excels in predictability. Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl. Boy does something dramatically stupid and can’t hope to get Girl. Boy does something dramatically different and outside his comfort zone and gets Girl. Big Red Bow. The only real mystery about rom-coms these days is, will it work?
To be fair, when you’re constricted by the tropes of such an established sub-genre, it is really hard to make it work. The actors can be good but the writing can suck; the writing can be brilliant but the film is hopelessly miscast. Everything works except for the pacing, which drags on (or speeds through) crucial turning points in this oh-so-formulaic form.
But a rom-com from the Nation of Romance? I’ve screened French comedies in the past and found them to be either mindless slapstick or subtler works that are only “comedies” in the way that some of Shakespeare’s plays are “Comedies”: a few laughs, and not everyone is dead at the final curtain.
Thus, I set down to watch this movie (English title, “I Do”) with genuine interest. How would Paris, the City of Love, the City of Light, the land of the New Wave, work within the straitjacket of this genre?
One day my mother came home with a slogan from her workplace. “Lower Your Expectations,” it read. Not really the gung-ho mentality of today but hey, it was the ’70s. Anyway, my father saw it, found it somewhat ludicrous, and came back with the flip side: “Up Your Aspirations!” He even had it printed up on a t-shirt.
To those of you who left comments and sent me notes of condolence, my thanks. They were very much appreciated in a particularly difficult time.
I’ve been trolling the blogs, the last few days, reading fiction from new/unpublished writers. I see the same thing, over and over, the same mistakes, repeated.
I have been a “Stratfordian” all my life…so far, anyway.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 