"Down with Love"

I am going to bury that Novak broad

and turn this crazy upside with love world

right side up again.

I'm gonna write the expose of the century

so the world will know once and for all

that deep down, all women are the same.

They all want the same thing, love and marriage.

Even Miss Barbara down with love Novak

and I am going to prove it.

[Richard] I'm Richard Brody

and this clip is from Down with Love,

a 2003 comedy, directed by Peyton Reed.

It's a work of neoclassicism,

a throwback to the Rock Hudson, Doris day comedies.

It's set in 1962 and stars Renee Zellweger

as Barbara Novak, the author of a best selling book,

Down with Love, a primordial women's liberation Valium,

and Ewan McGregor as Catcher Block.

Ladies man, man's man, man about town,

a swinging British journalist,

but with an air of Sean Connery's continental suavity.

Who decides to do an expose on Novak and her theories.

The first thing that distinguishes this film

is how wittily it references the styles of the era,

the clothing, the furniture, the gestures,

the vocal inflections, the electronic gizmos

in the bachelor pad, and even the motion picture techniques

that are used here, rear-screen projection,

and in a scene that has a panoramic view of the city,

a backdrop that is obviously painted.

But what raises this film above the level

of a merely charming throwback is what it says

about the styles of the era.

The style is, in a certain way, the substance.

The characters all seem to be playing games

with each other.

Their clothing, which is rather armor-like and formal,

and the domestic styles, and the vocal inflections,

all are forms of pretense.

People are concealing their identities

under these elaborate games of style

and this film shows that these pretenses

come at a high human cost.

In a certain way, the main subject of the film

is the birth of and success

of the women's liberation movement

and its results, both in the workplace

and in the bedroom.

Despite its retro style, Down with Love

is a modernist film.

And the scene that exemplifies this

is a climactic confrontation between Barbara Novak

and Catcher Block, which, for all of its scintillating

early '60s style wit, is conceived and filmed

in a way that is exemplary of cinematic modernism.

I knew that every time we were supposed to meet,

you would get distracted by one of your many girlfriends

and stand me up, and this would give me a reason

to fight with you over the phone,

and declare that I wouldn't meet with you

for 100 years.

[sighs] And then all I would have to do

was be patient, and wait,

the two or three weeks it would take

for everyone in the world to buy a copy

of my bestseller, and then I would begin to get

the publicity I would need for you to one,

see what I look like,

and two, see me denounce you in public

as the worst kind of man.

I knew that this would make you want to get even

by writing one of your exposes.