Romantic Comedy

Everyone knows how it ends. That is the genre's starting condition, not its flaw, and the ten films gathered in these two volumes work on it with their eyes open. Two people who have to find each other, something keeping them apart, a gesture that dissolves it: the audience has the promises in its pocket before the opening titles. All that changes is the decision about what to do with them, and there are five different decisions per volume — honor them all, move their center, reverse their value, break one halfway through at the moment it hurts most. Across the two volumes another rule surfaces, one the genre never states: the obstacle that counts has no face. It is not the rival. It is a habit picked up early, a conviction about what you are worth, a fear that has learned to call itself caution. Obstacles like that are not defeated, they are paid for, which is why ten very different endings can all ring true.