Romance Cliches

• According to popular lore, the romantic film is based on a simple formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. But that is not true. For the most part, the boys have nothing to do with it. The cliche that actually serves as the infrastructure of the classic romance is that the female lead almost never ends up with the man she was originally supposed to spend the rest of her life with. That is actually the theme of every Jane Austen novel, and of every movie based on a Jane Austen novel. Romances are built upon the idea that Prince Charming actually exists, but he may be a bit rough around the edges or temporarily unavailable, like Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre or the long-lost boyfriend in.

• A Very Long Engagement, or the weird guy who keeps popping in from the future in The Time Traveller's Wife. It helps a lot if the woman initially hates the man – 10 Things I Hate About You is an obvious example, as is Guys and Dolls. And it also helps if Prince Charming finds the female lead a bit annoying, as Heath Ledger does in 10 Things I Hate About You and as Matthew McConaughey does in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and as Dudley Moore ultimately does in Ten. There is something about movies with the number 10 in the title that always deals with unlikely pairings.

• Nobody knows why. Romantic films wend their way to the altar as inevitably as action films lead nowhere. Powerful, ubiquitous cliches associated with the genre include the bride or groom suddenly getting ditched at the altar (The Philadelphia Story, The Graduate, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Runaway Bride), and the hovering presence of the faithful sidekick, who secretly worships the male lead from afar. Romances depend on the traditional belief that opposites attract: retiring, tongue-tied bookseller Hugh Grant and glamorous movie star Julia Roberts in Notting Hill; obsessive-compulsive nutcase Jack Nicholson and harried single parent Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets; hotshot journalist Kate Hudson and jocky ad-man Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Not to mention crass yuppie lawyer Richard Gere and saucy call girl Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. A variant on this are films about people separated by a seemingly insurmountable cultural gulf, like Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan or Kristen Scott-Thomas and Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer.

• Then there is the special case of movies like Manhattan, where middle-aged men prey on women young enough to be their daughters. But that is Woody Allen. Actually, that is also the theme of Crazy Heart and numerous other movies, but mostly it is a Woody Allen trademark. Romantic films frequently feature the pushy but lovable mother, the harried, befuddled father, the fat, mouthy but highly supportive girlfriend who wears glasses and has never had a date, and the gay neighbour or co-worker who knows what you're going through because he's had his heart broken so many times himself. In a number of contemporary romances, the male lead has a best friend who is a lovable slob. Not until he can ditch this slob friend is he ready for the big time, relationship-wise.

• For romances to work, the heroine should initially be involved with a possessive creep, a catatonic Wasp, a perfectly harmless fellow she's been dating for years, or Mr Wrong. Teen romances have their own separate cliches. Actually, they have one separate cliche: teens from out of town find it hard to fit in so they start hanging around with social misfits or goths or beatniks or vampires suffering from social anxiety disorders. In teen romances, the jocks are invariably portrayed as cruel, self-absorbed idiots. The dead or near-dead make excellent partners in romances.

• That is the theme of Ghost, City of Angels and assorted other motion pictures. It seems to suggest that the dead make better company than the living, even though the sex is a drawback. Lovers separated in some way by the space-time continuum can be found in The House by the Lake and Just Like Heaven, the film where Reese Witherspoon plays a woman who does not let being legally dead get in the way of a relationship. All of these movies drive home the idea that a good man is hard to find, as is a good woman. Usually, a good man is harder to find, though. Except in the movies.