All volumes

Romantic Comedy — Volume 1The promise made good

Five films that know exactly what to do with the rules of romantic comedy: one follows them to the letter, one moves the center of gravity, one turns the message upside down while keeping the surface intact, one gives the ending away up front and shifts the tension to the why, one lets grief into a comedy. Five ways to use a convention without being ruled by it.

Romantic Comedy — Volume 2Distance is always a fear

Fame, money, a screen, an ocean: they look like circumstances and always turn out to be fears. Five devices for governing what a viewer knows before the characters do, up to the limit case of two leads who barely share a scene and hold to the last.