Since Valentine’s Day just passed, you might be sick of watching rom-coms. I know I am. The typical ‘boy meets girl’ to ‘happy ending’ pipeline gets boring after watching the same plot through different movies over and over again.
Anti Rom Coms
An anti-rom-com refuses to follow the rules that regular rom-coms put into place. It takes regular tropes, like grand gestures or meet-cutes, and approaches them differently. While rom coms often end in a happy ending and a happy couple, anti-rom coms offer a more cynical and grounded approach to love. I think that anti-rom coms hit deeper than regular comedy because it adds humor to uncomfortable situations and lets watchers look at things from a positive perspective. They also switch up tropes in unique ways and break patterns that we often see in romance movies. If the idea of anti rom coms sounds intriguing to you, here are four that I would recommend!
500 Days of Summer
I think this movie is the epitome of anti-rom coms. Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel, it follows Tom and Summer’s 500 days together. Ultimately, it ends in heartbreak, and Tom tries to reflect on their time together to figure out what went wrong. Marc Webb does a great job directing this movie, and its style and pacing really bring the whole story to life. 500 Days of Summer warns us not to fall in love with the idea of someone, but with who they are. Tom is obsessed with the idea he has built in his head of Summer, without truly loving her for who she is. The movie itself isn’t anti-love but instead is a cautionary tale of being realistic in pursuing relationships.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Directed by Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine is a cult classic. After their breakup, Clementine undergoes surgery to forget about her time with Joel. Soon enough, Joel decides to get the same procedure and slowly starts to forget the times they shared. It conveys that heartbreak and pain are an essential part of human experience, and that we need them to grow. It reflects that even though we know that love is painful and hard, we choose it again and again because we know how beautiful it is.
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain is arguably Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s best performances. They play Ennis and Jack, two cowboys who meet while working on a ranch in Wyoming in the 1960s. They fall in love but can’t openly live as a couple because of the societal pressures around them. They go on to make their own lives, but continue to meet in secret over the years. The movie follows the ups and downs of their relationship and the complexities of loving in secret. It also shows that living in fear can cost you the life you truly want and the happiness you deserve.
La La Land
La La Land follows Mia, an aspiring actress, and Sebastian, a passionate jazz musician, who meet in Los Angeles while chasing their dreams. They fall in love, but it gets harder as they both find success in their fields and their ambitions grow. They grapple with choosing their individual dreams or each other. This movie is very humbling and heartbreaking, but it offers a valuable lesson. It argues that love can be meaningful even if it doesn’t last forever, and every experience that we go through goes into shaping who we are. Some loves are stepping stones and lead us to personal growth.