SXSW Review: Romantic Comedy

There’s something about romantic comedies, their meet cutes, and inevitable happy endings that has been drawing in audiences for decades. From It Happened One Night to  Crazy Rich Asians, these stories have entertained us and, for several of us, influenced how we’ve viewed love. In her documentary Romantic Comedy, Elizabeth Sankey explores the genre from a number of angles. She opens with the evolution of female protagonists from independent, successful heroines who didn’t compromise for love to chaste, more conventional roles. Through a series of examples we see how little female protagonists have shifted from the latter since.

Romantic comedy is the genre most targeted towards women which leaves the movies often relegated as guilty pleasures that critics disparage or ignore. Sankey explains how getting married shifted the way she thought of romantic comedies. Before her wedding, they informed how she looked at romance and relationships. These movies usually ended with a wedding, leaving her floundering for what comes next. From there she began to notice all the ways romantic comedies were imperfect. Successful women are often portrayed as klutzes or in constant need of a man to save them. Creepy and possessive behavior on the part of men is excused as romance. All of these flaws are revealed through clips from several movies showing how prevalent these tropes truly are.

The documentary keeps the focus on these films, using narration from Sankey and her commentators. Romantic comedies are shown to be more than just a throw away viewing experience. For Sankey, they also affected how she acted towards men, wanting to be one of the girls who likes everything men like and are therefore deemed “cool.” Women in these films want to get married and everything they do is to fulfill that goal. We as viewers are invited to engage with how we feel about the messages these films are sending and how they have affected us too.

The documentary gives us a long sequence explaining how relatable Bridget Jones is as a character. Sankey delves into how while she related to these characters, not everyone did. These movies tended to be very white. They’re also almost always exclusively heteronormative. What is presented as normal in these movies is white, thin, straight protagonists. Fat women, Black women or gay men are there as the sassy best friends or simply to prop up the main character. Lesbians, bisexuals, trans characters, people with disabilities barely make the cut. The lack of representation is only one part of the problem. Sankey wisely points out as a white, straight woman she didn’t seek out the films that did exist and thus missed out on gems – a blind spot undoubtedly shared by many white woman. She opines on a future where we see romantic comedies starring protagonists from all backgrounds.

Despite the flaws in the genre, Romantic Comedy reminds us why these movies still remain enticing. We love watching opposites finding out that they complete each other over the course of a film. We’re attracted to that moment when two people confess their love towards each other. It makes us think of those wonderful moments in our own lives or moments we wished we could have. As the documentary tells us, it reveals our humanity. Through clips from several films spanning the decades between 1934 and 2018, Sankey lays out a solid argument why this genre remains so popular. Last year’s successes of Love, Simon, Crazy Rich Asians and To All The Boys I Have Loved Before prove her right.

7/10