Down with Love
Irresistible. Might actually be the best american rom-com of this century. Two people play pretend up to the point they’ve become the very thing they swore they would never become. It is insanely romantic and idealized - everything here feels right off the pages of something like Senhora by José de Alencar. The opening scene is the defining statement of the romantic literary movement updated to the 20th century - protesters of the bomb are interrupted by a pink, stylish burgeoisie woman making her way to her prestige, colorful job. Any semblance of political statement thrown to the side in favor of personal conflict and melodrama. You could critique it, but then again that’s why the romantic movement ended in the 19th century, so I’d rather just enjoy it.
In regards to the idolization part of it, there’s a lot. Firstly and most obviously it idolizes the technicolor period of Hollywood, and it makes for some amazing moments. The color scheme is pure Minelli, and the sheer amount of melodrama refers to Sirk, and the trickeries between the two leads to Hawks, and I could go on probably. Then there’s this idealized version of New York, where you just arrive as an unpublished author and you somehow score a massive, dreamlike apartment. Unadulterated Hollywood dream shit that just goes so hard. And god, Peyton Reed is a good director. Like, really. It’s a shame he has been stuck doing Ant-Man for half a decade because he’s truly fantastic at this. The split-screen phone call sex gag was mindblowing, one of the best uses of the technique outside of De Palma, so so horny. Everything so agitated, so bursting in music, a scenario so alive. The two main female characters arrive at a restaurant to a tune that could fit perfectly a song and dance musical scene fron the 1950s. He just has a touch to his camera where everything just feels really alive - kind of like Speed Racer.
Then there’s the moment where he just stops the camera at a single frame for 5 minutes while a character monologues, and I just have to say - I have never been this shocked by a plot twist in years. Like genuinely stood up from my seat, it turned the whole movie and its concept upside down for me and made it so much more interesting. Such a cool way to put in a different perspective the themes and ideas explores throughout the film. A real win for the screenwriters, who I generally don’t talk about in my reviews. It’s really interesting how they go about continuing it as well, as I was kind of feeling this film was a bit lost in its gender politics but it does tie things up at the end. On regards to its politics, I just have to mention how weird they are. First there are obvious jabs to capitalism and America (first 5 minutes the characters are talking about why the US would help the nazis; “Why would do that? We are good, Nazis are bad, I think?”), and then we get cuts to Mao era China and it’s just the most racist shit dropped in a depiction of the time period as being depressed. Then we cut to the USSR and it’s basically the same thing. I mean I don’t actually care, these are terrible depictions and kinda contradict what the movie is saying about the US, but it sure is funny.
Anyways, this film is a fucking banger. 10/10 plot twist dropped in a direction full of numerous references to classic hollywood, great leads and great supporting romance, is there anything better than this? I don’t think so.