THERE ARE THREE QUALITIES ESSENTIAL for any successful romantic comedy. First, it has to be amusing. Not screamingly funny, necessarily, but lighthearted and diverting enough to hold one's attention. Second, there have to be a few eccentric secondary characters who will provide jolts of unexpected life. Since the three-act storyline of a romantic comedy--boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl--has a foregone conclusion and provides no suspense, there's a limit to how surprising and interesting the main characters can be.
Finally, and most surprising in light of the fact that the movie in question is a comedy, there must be a palpable undercurrent of melancholy. The lead characters in a romantic comedy must feel dissatisfied, must be aware that there is a gaping chasm in their lives, must feel themselves to be wounded and hollow. At the same time, they must be afflicted by a kind of reticence that makes them fear the chasm will never be filled.
That reticence, that lassitude, is what gives these movies their unique erotic charge. Every good romantic comedy features at least one scene in which the two lead characters are desperately hungry for each other, so hungry that the audience practically shouts out "Kiss her!" But for the characters themselves, it can't be that simple. If it were, there would be no movie. The impulsive act simply of shattering the invisible barrier between them, and giving in to their passion, seems impossible.
Before the sexual revolution, the main problem was the seriousness with which erotic
intimacy was taken. Or there were other, more concrete, obstacles in the path of our would-be lovers during Hollywood's golden age. One of the characters might be engaged to somebody else, and so the kiss would be a betrayal. Or one has arrived at the moment of intimacy through an act of deliberate deception--by telling a really bad lie that, once confessed, will end the relationship forever.
With the advent of our more sexualized society, sex itself became the cause of the invisible barrier. Or, rather, the fear of sex. In the best modern romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally . . . ) both characters fear that erotic intimacy will destroy a friendship they both need more than sex. And they are right to fear it. The sex they do have doesn't make them fall in love with each other; the destruction of their friendship does. Fear of sex is an element of most present-day romantic comedies. The wildly raunchy 40-Year-Old Virgin, which takes an unexpected turn into romantic comedy, pushes this to the logical extreme: The title character's efforts to avoid sex at all costs is misread by the woman he loves as enlightened understanding.
Someone once said that every popular song has to figure out a new way to say "I love you" in 32 bars. In the same fashion, every romantic comedy must figure out a way to keep two characters apart for 90 minutes who are destined to be together--and without driving the audience crazy. Marc Levy, a French novelist, came up with a corker of a twist in his bestselling If Only It Were True, the most popular book published in France this decade. His story has been Americanized into the extraordinarily sweet new romantic comedy Just Like Heaven.
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