Diminutive Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris recently considered the plight of single people, women especially, in the movies.
Singleness is a condition waiting to be cured by a formula -- boy meets girl, etc. Love is the reward for having endured the narrative.
The rush toward couple formation at all costs in Hollywood flicks ain't pretty, no matter the value otherwise placed on pulchritude.
A date movie... is not necessarily a movie about dating. A dating movie (an effective one, anyway) is a movie you want to avoid on an actual date.
So true. Far from celebrating love, the oeuvre of Meg Ryan et al. paints a pretty grim picture: get coupled or die trying.
In the trajectory of her career, Ryan makes a vivid poster woman for modern single women in the movies. She started out believing in the purest imaginable love, then mutated into a woman who felt entitled to it, eventually turning bitter and skeptical. It doesn't matter which man she ends up with at the end of these movies. The search is perpetual; the next film begins with her worn out and doubtful all over again.
That neverending quest saga--the meet-cute Odysseus Mobius strip--may be the reason the cinetrix ended up seeing flicks like Natural Born Killers and Glengarry Glen Ross on dates, even though she is just as big a sap as the next dame.
One relationship movie that does break the moldy old mating mold, Morris asserts, is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which makes "poetry out of the minutia of a relationship" and leaves the conventional happy ending up in the air.
The 'Fesser and the cinetrix finally caught up with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's film just a few weeks ago [the cinetrix has a terrible Jim Carrey allergy dating back to "In Living Color"], and I'd have to agree. The vicissitudes of Joel and Clementine's romance had the 'Fesser in a state of high anxiety [as one vehemently opposed to "sad movies"], but what stuck with me was the telling observation Joel makes as he remembers meeting Clementine: "You were so rude, like we were already lovers."
Familiarity breeds contempt, yes, but there's an earned comfort in contempt that's familiar. It speaks to sticking it out long enough to know what you hate and saying "Okay" anyway. But try selling moviegoers that story in a He's Just Not That Into You world that believes in no-fault romantic comedy couplings.
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Sanity check: The cinetrix swears she's seen that Montauk house from Eternal Sunshine in a photograph. More improbably, it's a shot from inside through the big bay windows [and I want to say it's by an artist as improbable as Nan Goldin]. Anyone else who started with recognition, please help!
