So what would a feminist Rom Com look like?

[Scarletohello]

So we've had Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pretty Woman, Bridget Jones Diary, even Bridesmaids but I am struggling to envisage what a feminist rom com would be like.

Any ideas..??

Actually, 'Desperately Seeking Susan' was quite a feminist film and in the original ending, the two female leads, Roxana Arquette and Madonna ( who wasn't very well known when the film was made) were intended to ride off into the sunset together while their men anxiously waited for them at home!

desperatelyseekingsusanfab.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/normal-0-false-false-false-en-gb-ja-x.html?m=1

Life in the movies ends when the main characters have got together. If there's a sequel, they've split up and have to get back together. Breaking out of the "marriage is the end of the interesting part" paradigm sounds to me like a feminist move.

Perhaps a trilogy? Part I: meeting and getting together. Part II: married life - ends with a hook for... Part III: children.

I think I remember Gail Dines saying that, despite being a massive hit, there could be no sequel to Pretty Woman because every time they have an argument Richard Gere would remind Julia Roberts she was a prostitute and threaten to throw her back on the streets.

Actually from my username you can probably tell there is a certain romcom that I love (but it's far wittier and more knowing than modern romcoms).

Kissing Jessica Stein...basically Pride and Prejudice with lesbians.

However, she ends up with a man at the end. Scratch that.

Chasing Amy? Confident, professional and sexually experienced woman with both men and women, has a relationship with a guy, they break up because he's insecure, she becomes successful and her relationship status is a non-issue, he sees what a dick he was to her.

Seems legit?

That movie

Ooh what about, The truth about cars and dogs? Good female friendship, and the man eventually chooses intelligence and personality over looks...

*CATS not cars!! ( that would be an entirely movie altogether) :)

it's cyrano de bergerac isn't it?

feminist rom com:

Meet cute
Fall in love
Lovers tiff
Guy does creepy stalkerish gesture of love
Woman takes out restraining order, lives happily ever after

I quite liked Muriel's Wedding. But it is a long time since I watched it, so I might be mis-remembering it as tending towards being feminist.

I was just coming on to say Muriel's Wedding.

yes i remember muriel's wedding being reasonably feminist. not sure about the rom part though?

ah i hadn't heard of roxanne before

CKDexterHaven

Great point about screwball comedies. Just thinking about the plot of His Girl Friday. The main female character is planning to marry a safe, conventional man who expects her to give up her career in journalism and to basically care for her like a nice little woman. Over the course of the film she gets drawn back into chasing a story and eventually ends up not marrying him but going back to her ex husband (a newspaper editor). From a feminist POV there are perhaps some problematic bits - her ex very much wants her back and kind of manipulates her into a situation in which she gets drawn into a story and thus misses her train to get married! - but at the end of the day she ends up with a man who respects her for her profesionnal skills, and doesn't just expect her to sit at home making bread and babies. A film produced in 1940, based on a 1928 play.

Then just a single song from another film of the sameish era comes to mind - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, "Let's Just Call the Whole Thing Off" (you say tomato...). It's obviously intentionally silly, but does do a good job of realistically portraying the fact that a relationship is made between two individuals who may well duffer in lots of days, and that's OK.

Honestly, I think plays / films of a romantic bent from the first half of the century featured much better female characters than we see now...

'The truth about cats and dogs' was quite feminist from what I can remember.

Oops should have read the thread!

The romance between Winona Ryder and jared Leto in girl, interrupted was quite feminist. It wasn't the focus of the film or her life. She broke up with him to help herself.

In reply to HoVis, I saw an interview with Shirley Maclaine recently where she said something I have always thought. In her opinion the Hays Code meant that film-makers couldn't just introduce women as sex objects or the love interest and because of that female characters in that era had to have interesting things to do and say. When the Hays Code was abolished women went back to being the girlfriend with about five lines and no clothes on.

I've seen a lot of men in the industry say that the greatest era for film was the 1960s and 70s. I would say, for women, it was probably the 30s, 40s and 50s. A lot of the actresses back then were far bigger stars than their male contemporaries and got paid accordingly too.

What about First Wives Club (Brenda and Morty) or Practical Magic?

I think that some of the 80s rom coms were a lot better than recent films for showing romantic relationships (the rom com has been in significant decline as a genre imo as films have become dominated by effects and largely made for 14 year old boys).

For example, I'd actually nominate Romancing the Stone as a good example of how to do rom com (it was written by a woman who sadly died shortly after it came out).

The female protagonist (Joan, played by Kathleen Turner) is a romance novelist who spends her fairly sheltered life dreaming over an idealised adventure hero she has created. When she actually ends up in an adventure and meets an "adventurer" of the type she writes about, he's extremely unromantic and uncooperative and nothing goes to plan.

She is a damsel to start with, but in a believable way - she's obviously totally unequipped for the particular situation she gets into - and the film is really about how she changes and becomes a more robust and courageous person. There are also key points where her particular background as a novelist saves the day and earns respect from the Michael Douglas character. It's all from her pov and the thing driving the plot is not the goal of a relationship but the quest to get the jewel and rescue her sister. The tone of it is a lot more like screwball comedy too.

The film is interesting because it takes apart Joan's idea of romance and shows it for what it is - totally unrealistic, dangerous and even manipulative - a key strand is that you're not sure right up to the end whether the romance with the Michael Douglas character is happening because he's falling for her or whether he's just another person double-crossing her to get his hands on the jewel.

I've just seen (most of) The Five Year Engagement. Might count.
Quirky successful young San Franscisco couple move to Minnesota for her career. He gives up his career to go too.
Her career flourishes. She abandons ideas of babies.
He gets really bored.
The break up.
She pursues career.

..., I didn't see the end as the dc got back .....

I've never watched that, it sounds good.

(Romancing the Stone)