Down with Love

PREVIOUSLY: SOLID GEOMETRY

In this 2003 romantic comedy, Renée Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, a single-by-choice woman from Maine, newly arrived in New York City in 1962 to promote her feminist self-help book, Down with Love. Her book outlines a three-step process in which women can learn to live for themselves without pursuing marriage or the love of men. Meanwhile, playboy journalist Catcher Block, played by Ewan McGregor, becomes determined to get Barbara to admit she doesn’t really believe what she’s selling. If it means tricking her into falling in love with him, all the better.

Oh, this was so fun. And honestly, the less I talk about the specifics of the plot, the better, I think. I completely missed it when it came out. I’ve heard a few people rave about it but still knew next to nothing going in. I will say, there’s a twist in this movie, and I’m so glad that was not spoiled for me. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for anyone else. It was set up in retrospect, but I still didn’t see it coming. My jaw was on the floor. Between this and Emma, I am so ready for more romantic comedies to have twist endings. It is stunning how well it can work.

Speaking of twist endings, I’ve been thinking about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village recently. I’m a The Village apologist. That one I also missed when it came out, heard all the uproar about it and decided I probably never would see it, and only watched it on a whim within the past year or two. I was so pleasantly surprised by it. The twist isn’t (spoilers) that it takes place in the present. The real twist is that it’s a love story. It sold itself as a supernatural horror story but it’s actually a tale of selflessness and hope and second chances and new beginnings, you dinguses.

I’ve rewatched The Village a few times since that initial viewing. And every time I do, I get upset that Joaquin Phoenix has not been in more romance movies. I get upset that he and Bryce Dallas Howard have never done another movie together to date. Yes, he still gets to do his bread-and-butter thing of playing a weird misanthrope in The Village. And he’s also the romantic lead, and it’s so great. That scene where the monsters are coming and Bryce Dallas Howard is holding her hand out for him, not knowing for sure if he’ll come for her, and then he appears at the last second because of course he came for her and he grabs her hand, touching her for the first time in the movie, for the first time since they were children, and it goes into slow motion as he pulls her inside to safety? I’m lying on the floor gasping for air.

That scene where they sit on the porch together and he finally admits his feelings for her?

I’m not tearing up, you’re tearing up.

Every time I revisit it, I get so upset that Joaquin Phoenix didn’t decide to just become the Byronic lead in every romantic drama in the early 2000s, he does it so well.

I bring that up because Down with Love made me upset that Ewan McGregor didn’t do more romantic comedies with a single musical performance as a vanity set piece twenty years ago. Who cares about Star Wars? Who cares about action films or thrillers or prestige dramas or children’s films? Who cares about having a well-rounded, versatile, eclectic career? Why could he not have just done romantic comedies until he aged out as a lead and then done all that other stuff?

I do understand that I probably would have gotten bored with that eventually. Most romantic comedies are not as unique or as campy as Down with Love manages to be. It really does feel like something special, even as it treads well-worn tropes in a fond throwback to the screwball comedies of the sixties. God, I miss those.

I have mixed feelings on how well it manages to sell its modern updated “women really can have it all” message, but you know what, I had such a good time that I didn’t care. I mean, every time Ewan smiles, I’m also like, “Self-sufficient feminism what?” I get it, Barbara. No shame.

Normally, romances where one of the partners is deceiving the other the entire time give me a lot of secondhand anxiety, but this one didn’t. I had no idea how it was ultimately going to resolve. Some things felt a little rushed and I’m not sure how well it comes together in the end. But I do know that even if they don’t have white-hot chemistry together, they have enough, and Ewan McGregor is charming and handsome, and Renée Zellweger is adorable, and it’s still miles better than most other recent romcom pairings.

COMING UP NEXT: YOUNG ADAM