I MISS TALKING IN THE DARK: Barbara Nicolosi reviews Wimbledon

...Coming from the folks who did Notting Hill and Four Weddings, this is a mostly British romantic comedy that is most funny when it exploits the "quirky group of friends and family" that made both of those prior films work. Unfortunately, all the humor drops out before the mid-point of the film, as the writers try desperately to find a reason why two people should be committed to each other. I mean, we really don't have to make a commitment anymore, do we? Why do we even want to? So, what is the point of this film?

Fascinating problem for the modern romantic comedy. ...

It's really a quandary for the whole romantic comedy genre, because they all end up turning into dramas now! In comedy, funny is supposed to be first, but in romantic comedy, a kind of crippled metaphysics is ending up first. Love it. ...

One of the funniest confusions in contemporary drama is everything having to do with sex. So, in Wimbledon sex is something that need sto be gotten out of the way so that romance becomes possible. Amazing! The seediest moments of the movie are when the Kirsten Dunst character propositions her handsome lead, that she thinks fooling around before a tennis match is a good kind of recreation. They both agree, and so they go to bed. Then, later, when they start to care for one another, the romance is played out in a slow-mo montage of them walking on the beach, running in the park, talking and eating. These "romantic" scenes are almost completely devoid of physical contact.

Later in the film, sex actually becomes the enemy of the relationship. They almost break up over it. But not in any Christian sense. It's more that the sex is opposed to self-donation as opposed to being the impulse of self-donation.

It's all such a mess. A wonderful hopeful mess for us with a theology of the body to unleash. Because sex isn't going away any time soon. It's just when and how we are going to make our case. We're going to need more than academic papers here.

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posted by Eve at 7:51 PM | link

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