Eek-cute: the rebirth of the frothy romcom sociopath

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The online era is pushing screen romantics to alarming extremes. Whether posing as a stranger’s fiancee or framing someone as an obsessive stalker, happy endings look harder than ever to find It’s a long-running romcom trope that the couples we’re supposed to root for are often hiding lies that threaten the chances of any happy relationship blossoming. From classics such as The Shop Around the Corner to modern blockbusters such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the genre thrives whenever it presents the audience with the most alarming red flags it conceals from its characters, raising the stakes by seeing if sparks can still fly when an ulterior motive behind each meet-cute is hidden in plain sight. In the romantic comedies we’ve seen so far this year, this trope has not only been revived but pushed far beyond its breaking point, cementing a new romcom archetype: the unlucky-in-love sociopath. This week’s new release Finding Emily is the starkest example to date, introducing psychology...
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Who was Muriel Box, Britain’s most prolific female film director?

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She was also the first woman to win an Oscar for best original screenplay. Now a new radio documentary aims to give her pioneering work a fresh appraisal

In 1991, as a film student, I was offered £50 by a German women’s collective to shoot Muriel Box. But when the documentary director and I arrived at her home we were told that she was too ill to see us. She died a few months later aged 85. While I regret never meeting her, I’m also relieved. How terrible to have shown even a glimpse of my full ignorance of her achievements, a pioneering film-maker who had fought her way through an industry hostile to women to make a major contribution to cinema.

Box directed 13 feature films in the 1950s and early 60s and remains Britain’s most prolific female director. Her titles, made for a mainstream audience, include The Passionate Stranger, an imaginative retort to the romance novel, which boldly experiments with form; the controversial juvenile courtroom drama Too Young to Love; and Box’s favourite, The Truth About Women, an eclectic tapestry of the complex lives of women.

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