Demand for fulfilment

Love-struck protagonists wander aimlessly through every possible film genre, from romantic comedies and dramas, to thrillers, horror and action movies – as a narrative motif, love can be smuggled into any story anytime. However, despite our obsession with the topic, few genres are as disparaged and as celebrated as romantic film. Of course, with the blurring of boundaries between “high” and “low” culture and their intermingling, there has been some democratization in the area of romantic film as well. There are college courses and academic texts analyzing romantic comedies such as Bridget Jones's Diary, while critics get excited about film and TV romances such as Normal People, an adaptation of the novel by Sally Rooney. Yet not without controversy and resistance. Take, for instance, writer Will Self’s lament on today’s state of affairs in the world of literature (and the tastes of the hateful millennials), in which he protested against the popularity of Sally Rooney with almost as much pathos as Mark Twain when he expressed his histrionic animosity towards Jane Austen.

Escapist romance is still more or less relegated to a guilty pleasure. To claim its artistic legitimacy, a love story needs something more – it is expected to rise above its baseness and become a catalyst for addressing the more elevated topics and issues about the society we live in and our humanity. On the other hand, the easy-listening format of romance offers a welcome respite from the efforts to make commercially viable films for mass audiences that offer up controversial or “unglamorous” social issues and try to raise awareness about harmful social conventions. Stanley Cavell, thus, wrote about the comedies of remarriage, which, portraying a battle of the sexes, problematized the institution of marriage and the position of women in society, while centring on stubborn female heroines who strived for equality and emancipation. In such films, the conflict, of course, would always be resolved to the satisfaction of both parties, allowing these comedies to address current issues in a benign enough manner. In the case of Bridget Jones, the subversion consisted in the very choice of the main protagonist who does not fit into the proscribed Hollywood beauty standards. Eleanor Bergstein, the screenwriter of Dirty Dancing, wove the subplot about abortion into the story about a summer romance so cleverly that the producers could not remove it unless they intervened into the central plot.

Subversion sometimes lies in the inversion of the very conventions of a happy ending. Irene Jukić Pranjić’s animated film Gamer Girl takes precisely this final resolution and the promised ‘happily ever after’ as its starting point. The film follows the central female protagonist from the moment she gets married to her utter psychological and physical breakdown caused by the burden of her daily commitments. The film’s narrative structure and visual aesthetic mimic a video game in which the protagonist’s world is extraordinarily bounded by and shaped according to the strict rules and tasks she must fulfil. The space within which she moves is flat, while her freedom of movement is radically limited. She is only able to move left-right and up-down, the goal being to successfully complete all of her task and reach the end of the day, while fulfilling the demand for an active sexual life is particularly important. Meanwhile, the man is reduced to a background character whose only function is to measure the protagonist’s ability to maintain a “successful” marriage.

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