Down with Love and Postmodernism

While Reed’s Down With Love is a 2000s postmodernist romcom, it has such pastiche that one could mistake it for a 90s feature; however, this pastiche serves as a discredit to the film by offering no originality to the genre. The barest plot synopsis of the story employs the most stereotypical and honestly banal structural elements of the romantic comedy: the young, conventionally attractive female lead swears off men, probably from some unexplained previous experience with a man who shares characteristics with the male lead except one: the capacity to retire his playboy lifestyle; so, in the end, the unlikely match end up together following the man’s relentless pursuit of the woman. The style and aesthetics of the picture, combined with its mimesis of modernist romantic comedies but in a postmodern landscape that borders on the satirical, spawned a continuation of, but also a deviation from, the modernist conventions of A New Leaf (in the same responsive relation that Pillow Talk had to Midnight regarding classical conventions). This unfortunately serves as a detriment to the artistic sensibilities of the film, because it contributes to the lack of originality attributed to postmodern films. For example, despite spanning four decades, all three of our past screenings involve romantic comedies where the male lead only romantically pursues the female lead under false pretenses in order to gain something for his own benefit, either financially or (ironically) in order to be able to continue his playboy lifestyle without consequence. So while the postmodernist aesthetic provides entertainment in terms of style and comedy, artistic integrity is what lacks in Reed’s film.