Romcoms and Romantic dramas

What's the beef, jilly jeans? I'm looking into romcons and romdrams and what makes them tick.

The greatest: The Apartment. It's for one thing a romantic triangle - see Lubitsch. But it's greatness is that it's also a biting corporate world satire. And a romantic drama comedy.

Avanti. The twist - their parents had been having an affair for 10 years. There isn't a 'straight' comedy-drama in Wilder's work.

Lubitsch - That Uncertain Feeling. A romantic triangle. This underpins lots of Lubitsch, The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise. So This Is Paris. (Wilder's triangle - Sabrina.) Ninotchka is that rare thing - a politico-cultural romantic comedy. Heaven Can Wait - a whole life story. 

The best. Pretty Woman. Twist - she is a prostitute. (Same twist as Breakfast at Tiffanys.) Sleepless in Seattle - the twist - they don't meet. You've Got Mail / Shop Around the Corner - twist - they don't realise they are each other's secret pen friends. Roman Holiday - twist - she's a Princess.

Elizabethtown - so much more than a romcom. Death, family, new places. Say Anything Cameron's only straight rom.. romdram? With funny bits? Twist - her dad's a criminal. Annie Hall. Somehow stands in a category of its own - hugely influential.

Something's Gotta Give. Older couple, he doesn't want to / can't reform from bachelor habits. When Harry Met Sally - and its progeny Friends with Benefits - can friends become romantic?

Oh - here's a subset - Jane Austen. Period romantic comedies with satire on class and privilege.

OK - we're making some ground with that. Now - 'straight' romantic dramas of note. Brief Encounter - they're both married. (Which with at least one of them married leads to - The Bridges of Madison County, In the Mood for Love, Past Lives, Strangers When We Meet, In Name Only, Carol...) Two For the Road - the story of a whole relationship told over the same routes / different holidays into France. (Bad Timing a sort of Roegian variant, with suicide attempt.) A Star Is Born - she on way up, he on way down (and the later version La La land), The Way We Were. 

The Class / Societal Rift - from City Lights. An Officer and a Gentleman. Chalet Girl. Far From Heaven and its antecedent All That Heaven Allows, apparently Mississippi Masala a good example, Me Before You - and he's totally paralysed... 

Which leads us to the morbid sub-sect of romantic illness / death drama of which Love Story is a pukey representative (but let's not forget a massive hit). One Day. Five Feet Apart. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Which all comes from classic literature, surely - Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, Romeo and Juliet (the 'wrong side of the tracks' plot which informs countless stories). Let's not get in to David Lean's massive historical love stories on a huge canvas. That great ITV thing - was it Me and You? Another death. The Notebook.

Boy meets girl, loses girl, gets her back - it's the classic formula. Even The Apartment is that (most subtly disguised). Even Casablanca is that. But the great films aren't just that - they're always something better, something more.

Letter From an Unknown Woman. She's mad about him. Apart from a brief dalliance, he doesn't even notice her. A delicate film that blossoms and dies like a flower.

The reason I'm writing all this? I've written a 'straight' romantic drama - two kids meet, become friends. Twenty years later meet again, have an affair - but he's a shit and is already married, breaks her heart. Ten years later, they meet again - he's become a better person, she's bitter and hostile - they make it work, somehow - love prevails. So what? No twist, no death, no variation on a theme. Characters nicely written, three dimensional, but nothing really more than a nicely observed soap opera. Now I see why Q didn't love it. And I still can't think of a 'straight' romantic drama - without twist, without death, without variation, without an interesting historical backdrop or division of some kind - that was any good. Not one.