“I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.”
The Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) is the encapsulation of how love can withstand the test of time. For those unfamiliar with the films, they follow Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), who meet one day on a train going to Vienna, Austria and decide to spend one night together in the city before Jesse must fly home to America and Celine goes back to school in France.
With each movie releasing nine years apart from each other, 1995, 2004, and 2013, respectively, there is nothing more “slow burn” than this. Throughout these movies, director Richard Linklater depicts the realities of love that many films in the genre steer away from. He shows the magic that comes with slowly falling in love with someone, the pining that happens for almost a decade between the two, but also the depressing and painfully realistic feeling of falling out of love with someone.
“As much as the trilogy is about passionate romance, chance and destiny, it’s also, quite rightly, interested in what comes after: the mundanity and reality of not only a romantic life but eventually a married one. Midnight’s greatest achievement is developing these characters beyond stunted twenty-somethings and dealing with the baggage (and even burden) of realizing ‘This is all there is.’” writes Luke Perry in his article “The Space In-Between: Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy.”
When we think of romance movies, our minds (at least my own) go to rom-coms, but is that all they are? They’ve turned into just descriptions of tropes (“enemies to lovers,” “fake dating,” “workplace romance,” “there was only one bed,” etc.) Romance movies, in the past decade, have slowly shied away from moments like what’s in the Before movies.
While I will say, I do believe the Before trilogy of movies are one of a kind, the romance movies of the 90s and early 2000s set the bar, possibly too high, for the movies to follow.
Another romance film I love, which emphasizes more of the lows of relationships and finding companionship in others, is Lost in Translation. Like the Before movies, which took place all throughout Europe (Vienna, Paris, the Greek Peloponnese peninsula), Lost in Translation follows Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) in Tokyo, Japan.
While the Before Trilogy dives into the building of a relationship off your experiences and chemistry, Lost in Translation does the opposite. The two leads begin to bond over their shared loneliness in Tokyo, as Bob, who has been married for 25 years, feels distant from his wife with all the travel he does for work, and Charlotte, who is newly married and travels with her photographer husband, is constantly left in the hotels of the cities they visit.
Another notable mention is the Wong Kar-wai trilogy of movies Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and In the Mood for Love. While these films stand out to me in the general genre of romance movies, some of the best (aka my favorite) rom-coms are also from this era. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 10 Things I Hate About You, Sleepless in Seattle, Pride and Prejudice, The Notebook- you get the picture.
Now, am I saying there haven’t been good romance movies in the last ten years? No, but within the last decade, the only romance movie (I can think of) that even holds a hat to those of our past is La La Land, directed by Damien Chazelle. This film is heartbreakingly beautiful, not just in the storyline and characters but also in the cinematography and atmosphere.
Yet, despite the fact that romance movies aren’t extinct, why are they not what they used to be? While this is true for the 90s and early 2000s movies, many romance movies now are rom-coms that are being kept alive by streaming platforms- specifically Netflix.
Netflix is one of the sole carriers that keeps rom-coms (and, subsequently, the romance genre) alive by a thread. Some of the most popular rom-coms released recently, like Set It Up or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, are Netflix Originals. But, as much as I enjoy these movies, is this really all that’s left for romance movies?
While I have briefly divided into the topic that streaming services have contributed to the death of cinema-going (and middle-budget movies) in my article “The New Wave of Cinema,” this could also be connected to romance films.
Many romance movies function on a lower budget than other theatrically released films. For example, the Netflix Originals I mentioned before? Set It Up had a budget of $13.8 million, and To All the Boys had a budget of $18 million. Now compare these still well-made and well-received films to the $30 million budget of La La Land.
But why does the budget dictate where the movie will be released? My two favorite romance films in the 90s and early 2000s, Before Sunrise and Lost in Translation, functioned on a $2.5 and $4 million budget, respectively. Both of these movies and La La Land, were released in theaters and faced critical and box-office success.
For movies to break even when released in theaters, they need to make at least 2.5x times their budget, due to having to make up the film’s initial budget, marketing, and the theater’s cut. Recently, the movie Anyone But You, released this past Christmas, had a budget of $25 million and made $151.7 million.
Anyone But You follows Sydney Sweeney (Bea) and Glen Powell (Ben) as the two have your typical rom-com meet-cute at the start of the film, only for them to end up hating each other through a misunderstanding and having to fake-date for the remainder of the film to appease their friends and family.
While the film’s plot is very formulaic storyline, with your popular tropes (“enemies-to-lovers,” “fake dating,” etc.) thrown in. Despite this, the film thrived (possibly because of the two leads’ chemistry and their dating rumors) and has been able to prove that rom-coms have a large audience and can do well in theaters.
“[Anyone But You is] a fun movie. People want to go to movies with each other and they want to have fun. There haven’t been a lot of fun movies for a long time. Why do these movies always go to streaming? It’s because studios don’t put them in theaters,” says Will Gluck, the film’s director. In the past he’s also directed other popular movies, like Easy A, starring Emma Stone, and Friends with Benefits, with Mila Kunis.
“All the naysayers in our business saying that people are never gonna go back to theaters … They’re not gonna go back to theaters unless there’s a reason for them to go back. What this movie shows us is that there are a lot of different reasons to go back to theaters, not the ones that we just immediately think of.”
If rom-coms have proven to be doing well theatrically, what’s stopping production companies from releasing romance movies in theaters like those that are staples of the 1990s? I’m hopeful that the success of Anyone but You will encourage production companies to take more risks by allowing romance movies to be released in theaters.
As more people begin to return to movie-going, and as more highly anticipated films get released, maybe the movies profound movies that we once knew of in the 90s, with lower budgets and more obscure casts, can finally make a return.