Sundance: Two Romantic Awakenings

There’s a genre of film that we could call the Sundance Romantic Awakening, and it goes like this: a troubled loner meets an aggressively perky girl who perkies her way into his drab life. He resists, but eventually her perkiness breaks through, because she too has some trouble in her past. Symbiosis. But will he drive her away; does her perkiness know some bound? Almost! But not quite! Saved! By irony and flirtation!

It’s not hard to see why such films get made, over and over again. It’s an irresistible fantasy that speaks to the heart of many a young filmmaker, and to his or her aspirations, too, since Sundance seems to sanction them in each festival. This year, so far, we’ve got at least two of them, and they fall at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The Last Word is an unusually decent example of the genre, if you ignore the familiar simplicity at its core. And its characters are a little older than usual. The perky aggressive girl is Winona Ryder instead of Zooey Deschanel.

Good Dick, on the other hand, has completely reinvented the formula. You see, it’s about a girl who’s a troubled loner and meets an aggressively perky guy who perkies his way into her life. Will he be able to break through? Does he have some darkness in his past? I’m not telling!

One unusual hallmark of these films is the lying and evasion on the part of the loner, in order to protect his or her secrets, or on the part of the aggressively perky friend-lover who needs to hide the darkness until the right point in the story. Lying may not be unusual, but the way it’s almost always brushed off and accepted by the would-be romantic partner seems odd.

So one reason The Last Word works better than most is that it takes the lying seriously. It’s not clear why the lonely guy—a writer who writes suicide notes for a fee—needs to do so much lying instead of coming clean, but at least the lies are allowed to mount. They become a destructive force.

Another reason is Ray Romano. He’s one of the writer’s clients, and he has a dark, funny sense of humor that sharpens the picture every time he appears. Ryder is fine, Wes Bentley as the writer is a bit one-note (furrowed brow, intense stare), but Romano strikes the right balance between self-loathing and adventurism.

There’s barely a single action in Good Dick that makes a lick of sense. Virtually nothing. Why would a woman let a known stalker into her apartment while pointing a knife at him “in case he tries something”? Why would someone, anyone, bet a guy on how big his dick is when he probably has some inkling. That’s a sucker bet!

And let’s get one thing straight: stalking isn’t cute. If you’re going to romanticize the stalker, at least do it with some care and thought (see: In the City of Sylvia). And let’s get another thing straight: movies that show a genuine interest in rape and abuse don’t make their characters bicker about the possiblity of it, as if they’re arguing over who should take out the garbage.

Good Dick is easily the worst film I’ve seen at the festival this year.