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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The Virgin Suicides review – Sofia Coppola’s debut rereleased with solemn trigger-warning

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Sunlit suburban calm masks the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Sofia Coppola made her feature directing debut with this adaptation of the literary sensation of its day: Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel about five teen sisters in 70s suburban Michigan who take their own lives. Now it is rereleased with a solemn trigger-warning disclaimer at the beginning about certain historic attitudes which might now cause offence; these are unspecified, but appears to mean the entire premise of the film, up there in the title, but which is treated more circumspectly nowadays in the context of new ideas around self-harm and “suicidal ideation”.

This was a movie which mystified as many as it entranced, and it would be honest of me to admit that I didn’t quite understand it back in 2000, and maybe don’t quite now. But I can perhaps appreciate with more clarity its artistry and poise and the confident way Coppola allows her film to be serenely mysterious and almost affectless in its sunlit suburban calm, a reticence which appears to mask the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie.

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