In their 1980 song of the same name, the J. Geils Band sang, “Love stinks,” and boy, they weren’t kidding. In love, there are no guarantees. Infidelity, free-floating resentment, mutual loathing, garden-variety boredom: sometimes it seems there are more forces to drive couples apart than to hold them together. No wonder the romantic comedy, in which meant-to-be lovebirds find their way to a happy ending, is one of our most cherished genres. Sometimes, though, it feels good to look the beast of love-gone-wrong directly in the eye.
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A recent spate of darkly glittering comedies give us the opportunity to do just that. Forget the summer of love; this has been the summer of our grumbling discontent. Welcome to the age of the anti-romantic comedy. In writer-director Michael Shanks’ horror-comedy Together, a co-dependent couple falls prey to a mystical force that literally glues them together. Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville—which bills itself as “An Unromantic Comedy”—turns the idea of open marriage into a cracked slapstick symphony. Oh, Hi!, co-written and directed by Sophie Brooks, riffs on the idea of women who want too much too fast, and the men turned off by it. And Jay Roach’s black comedy The Roses, which traces the slow decline of a once in-love couple, may not so much make you laugh as cackle with bitter recognition—or maybe a shudder.
What, exactly, has brought us to this moment? These are all sideways romances for an uncertain time. Just four years ago, it seemed unthinkable that we’d find ourselves in an era when women’s reproductive rights are being curtailed and controlled, when some men seem to believe that women’s ascendance in the workplace is a direct affront to their masculinity, when transgender people who are simply trying to live their lives are facing hostility that threatens their very right to exist. There’s evidence that Gen Z is having less sex than their forebears—and no wonder, when the state of togetherness is such a mess. Yet we’re still trying to get together, to commit forever, to start families. Maybe these movies—as well as a TV show like Lena Dunham’s comic misadventure Too Much—seek to grant us some relief from the pursuit of romantic perfection. Finding love has never been an enterprise for the faint of heart.
Sometimes it’s even horrific. In Together, Alison Brie and Dave Franco—who are married in real life—play Millie and Tim, a longtime couple who have just left the city for a new, but also more isolating, life in the country. Millie is a teacher, and she’s the impetus for the move, having accepted a new and better job at a small school. Tim, meanwhile, might not call himself a failed musician, but that’s exactly what he is. When Millie puts him on the spot by publicly proposing to him at their going-away party, he stumbles before half-heartedly assenting. Something is keeping him from conjoining his life with Millie’s, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her. These two have been together so long that they’re fully in tune with each other’s rhythms. Is that boredom or love—or a little of both?
Together is a squishy-gross body-horror comedy about the ways longtime couples sometimes meld sensibilities so completely that one partner or the other may feel subsumed by the whole. But what happens when one half of a couple comes to feel incomplete? That’s the idea Roach and screenwriter Tony McNamara explore in The Roses (adapted from Warren Adler’s 1981 novel, previously filmed in 1989 with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner). Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch play the seemingly perfectly matched Ivy and Theo. She’s an unambitious chef; he’s an architect and the family’s main breadwinner. Then Ivy’s career skyrockets, while Theo’s literally collapses. As the cracks in their partnership deepen, each begins to see qualities in the other—ugly ones—that had previously remained hidden. They fight viciously, and their hostilities only escalate as they begin divorce proceedings. We start out loving these characters, together and separately; by the end, we’re left watching their over-the-top discord with horrified fascination.
Cumberbatch and Colman make us believe in this couple’s bond: at one point after their troubles begin, they leave a marriage counselor’s office howling with laughter, having cracked each other up with the creativity and excessive vitriol of their respective complaints. The appalled therapist doesn’t find their situation so funny, but she’s outside their loop of intimacy; they’re in cahoots, so keyed in to one another that they enjoy each other’s company over anyone else’s. They draw us in too: you might find yourself hoping against hope they can pull themselves together.
Splitsville comes at the territory of squabbling spouses from another angle. Kyle Marvin plays Carey, a sweet if somewhat dull guy who’s shocked and hurt when his wife of 14 months, Adria Arjona’s sexy-glam life coach Ashley, announces that she wants a divorce. Seeking solace, Carey runs to his friends, Dakota Johnson’s Julie and Covino’s Paul, though they aren’t much help. They think that he’s overreacting, that he’s merely provincial. They tell him they’re in an open marriage, suggesting that he should be a little more freethinking himself.
Julie and Paul may think they’re cool about everything—until Carey and Julie sleep together once, in secret. Paul finds out and blows his top. For many couples, infidelity is a nonnegotiable breach of trust, never to be forgiven. But Covino’s movie, co-written with Marvin, mines the situation, and the chain of crazy events it ignites, for its inherent comedy. The movie falls apart in the wrap-up, but it’s trying to get at some complex and engaging ideas, chief among them that spiritual loyalty may matter just as much as, or more than, sexual fidelity.
But how do people ever get together in the first place? And what happens when signals get crossed early on? Oh, Hi! may be the most daring of all these movies, and the funniest, albeit in sometimes deeply uncomfortable ways. Molly Gordon’s Iris and Logan Lerman’s Isaac haven’t been dating for long, but everything seems to be going swimmingly; they’re taking their first road trip together, an escape to a beautiful rented house in the country. Upon arrival, they immediately have hot sex. Then Isaac makes them a fabulous dinner. More hot sex will follow. But during a moment in which Isaac is, for reasons that shouldn’t be given away, particularly vulnerable, Iris blurts out how confident she feels about the future of their relationship. That’s how she learns that Isaac doesn’t consider their “thing” a relationship at all. He thinks they’re just having fun.
Iris, who’d previously seemed mostly sweet, goofy, and crazy in the fun way, suddenly comes off as crazy in the not-so-fun way, certainly in Isaac’s eyes. He’d merely told her the truth, but in doing so, he’d crushed her expectations. As he tries to explain himself, her reaction becomes more extreme. Their romantic weekend becomes an outright hostage situation, played for laughs. Even French toast becomes a kind of weapon.
Brooks and Gordon, who co-wrote the script together, are having a good laugh at the way women can go off the rails when their expectations aren’t met. They’re also sympathetic to the nature of romantic dreams—we can’t help hoping for a happily-ever-after, even when we know better. But Oh, Hi! is also attuned to the way the guy is almost always framed as the villain when a relationship doesn’t work out, even if he’s just made a clueless mistake. Women are supposed to be more sensitive, more caring, maybe even smarter than men. That doesn’t mean we can never be wrong.
Oh, Hi! is outlandishly funny, but it’s ultimately an unsentimental film. If we convince ourselves that our own feelings are king, are we making enough room for the feelings of others? The reality, one that these not-so-romantic comedies reflect, is that most humans don’t really fall in love—we stumble into it. Maybe that’s why audiences have responded so strongly, both pro and con, to Lena Dunham’s Netflix series Too Much, the follow-up to her acclaimed show Girls, which ended up, accurately or not, defining a generation. In Too Much, Megan Stalter plays an outgoing but awkward 30-ish TV producer who’s transferred from New York to London. There she meets a not-so-charming (at least at first) musician, Felix, played by Will Sharpe, and the two embark on a bumpy relationship.
Too Much is by turns endearing and exasperating, a lot like clumsy sex. Some may consider it a corrective to the more sugary Emily in Paris. No matter what, the new anti-romantic comedies do require some patience. And aren’t our real-life romantic complications bewildering enough? Please, just give us the fantasy!
Sometimes, though, a dose of bitterly funny reality makes you feel less alone. Occasionally seized with the impulse to murder your partner, whom you genuinely love with all your heart? Join the club. So intent on romantic bliss that you act a little crazy when your crush rejects you? Jump on the bandwagon. The only people who can know the truth of a union are the people inside it, but now and then it’s fun to be a tourist in someone else’s problems. And best of all, once the lights come up, you’re free to leave—no legal documents require