Modern Romance

What happens when you define your love by your obsession. The fascinating thing about Modern Romance is that the frog boils so slowly that, by the time Robert's deeply abusive behaviours are front-and-centre, you don't even notice it. Like Mary, you're almost swept up in the grandour of Robert's statements and gestures. Almost. Because like Mary, we can see exactly who he really is, yet he loops around you so fast that you get lost in your own thoughts, lose track of the situation, and default to safety-through-compliance. Robert is a delusional man, and he's the perfect litmus test for male audience members who gleefully declare their past - or present - relation to his behaviours. And I'm one of them. I saw this at 19 and felt a strong kinship with Robert (God forbid), but watching it again now at 33, I realise that my relation was to specific flavours: the jealousy, insecurity, self-destruction. What I didn't quite understand at the time that Robert was abusive, toxic, hostile, and emotionally violent. Everything he does is built around a need to control Mary, and control her emotions, and any time that he isn't the sole source of joy and happiness in her life, he does everything he can to sabotage the third party until he's the only thing she has left. He is a textbook abuser, but it's almost easy to miss if you haven't been in these situations yourself. The script is so sharply observed and so bitingly acidic that its veneer of romcom sentimentality crumbles away and reveals a jagged, abrasive horror film in its place. This is no joke - the final stretch is as intense as Gone Girl, and you'll find yourself screaming at the screen for Mary to just get the hell out of there. Robert is the kind of man who could genuinely murder his partner, and then somehow manage to justify it. You know the type - he'll say that he had to kill her because he loves her so much...because if he can't have her, no one can...because they're meant to be together. Yuck, he makes me sick. I'm glad I figured out my own shit. At 19, I was dealing with a lot of unresolved and unsurfaced childhood trauma that left me an open wound, and I continuously found myself in situations with people who would dig their fingers in and stretch the wound open further. My emotional resilience was strong, but so was my emotional dysfunction. So desperate to reject any form of authority or control over me that I felt the need to exercise deep control on everything else in my life - just to balance the scales - and it took me a long time, and a lot of therapy, to come to terms with my past and the things I had experienced as a child that led me down this path. The path to healing was arduous, and non-linear, but I'm well down that road now and I feel healthier than ever. I'm now the age Albert Brooks was when he made this, which means I'm Robert's age. I can see just how dangerous Robert is, and how the festering mindsight of his manipulative brain has corrupted everything about his worldview and left him a lonely, deeply-hurt man who needs to hurt everyone around him and control a woman just to feel a sense of normalcy. I was never like that, but I can see what that path looks like. Robert is a man who never tried to break his own spell. We don't know why he ended up like this, and frankly, I don't care, because he's an adult and he's causing irrevocable harm on those around him. This is what makes this film such a masterpiece, because it has a deep and flavourful character study of a narcissistic, abusive male partner, but it's still so hilarious throughout. The set pieces are brilliant - Brooks lets every single scene stew in itself and we're left with a hotpot of ingredients that will elicit different laughs at different times for every audience member. With tight handheld cameras throughout mixed with gorgeous, elongated wides, and a sparse emptiness where a score should be, this is a film that doesn't try to compose its message onto you - its a Rorschach test for relationships, and if you ever find yourself dating a man who says he relates to this film...run a fucking mile.