Washington – She is a modest college student. He is a dapper billionaire.
And their erotic encounters are so explicit and disturbing in Fifty Shades of Grey that the film has provoked protests by anti-violence groups and been banned in Malaysia, whose censorship board says it is more like “pornography than a movie”.
The film was Hollywood’s only offering on this year’s Valentine’s Day. It may not fit everyone’s idea of what is romantic, but the movie, based on the hugely popular EL James novel, is poised to be the most successful romantic film in more than 10 years and may revive a genre that has long lost its mojo.
It has been years since love stories were generating profits and audiences were clamouring for the next Renée Zellweger or Meg Ryan romantic comedy.
Studios have struggled to reinvent the genre in a way that appeals to broad audiences.
The closest thing to a successful romantic film last year was The Fault in Our Stars, which grossed $124.8 million (R1.47 billion) in the US, but appealed to younger viewers.
In 2013, the big-budget The Great Gatsby barely made a profit in the US.
Of 100 rom-coms released in the past six years, only five have made more than $100m. Only the quirky Silver Linings Playbook(2012) was a critical and financial success.
The lacklustre results mean the slates for Disney, Time Warner, Universal and Sony Pictures for the next few years will include few mid-budget romantic films. These are being made by independent production houses and television.
“It’s difficult for a studio to justify pouring $40, $50, even $100m into a film that we call a one-off,” says Tom Nunan, a professor of film studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and producer of the movie Crash.
When Nunan pitches movies to studios, he is asked to talk about “episodes” – a term borrowed from television – to show how one idea can keep audiences hooked for years.
“But often the cinema experience, especially for romance, is a one-time-only special moment.”
It’s not like romance is totally lost. Even films such as Spider-Man and The Hunger Games are explorations of romantic relationships. What’s harder is to get audiences into theatres with the promise of sweeping them off their feet. Hollywood has to mix love stories with lightsabres, raunchy male comedy and splashy special effects to draw a big crowd, producers say.
Lynda Orbst, a producer of the 1993 rom-com hit Sleepless in Seattle, says romantic films are taking new shape. Stories revolve around biographies like The Theory of Everything, the story of physicist Stephen Hawking’s relationship with his Cambridge classmate, Jane Wilde.
Orbst is working on a biographical movie with a love story at its centre, but doubts the rom-coms she made so popular will experience a revival.
Her last rom-com was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003, by which time romantic comedies had peaked. Too many films offered clichés about the handsome guy meeting the charming girl and their fractious but ultimately successful romance.
In 2005, Judd Apatow brought back funny romances through the lens of guy humour with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up in 2007. In 2011, Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig, introduced a new brand of edgier rom-com heroines. Comedian Amy Schumer is to release the rom-com Trainwreck this year. But those are the exceptions. Few romantic films are getting support from the biggest studios.
“Romance is not dead. It’s just not funny any more,” Orbst said. “They became corny, and audiences got wise and cynical.”
Fifty Shades may break the slump. The film has an enormous built-in audience of book fans. The novels have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.
In the weeks leading up to its release in the US on Friday, the movie set a new record for advance ticket sales for an R-rated film, according to Fandango.
“Romance is in the eye of the beholder,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at data research firm Rentrak.
“People may debate whether Fifty Shades is a romance, but what it does is give audiences something new and edgier that they haven’t seen before, with the basic elements of romantic tension and flirtation that will appeal to date night and girls’ night audiences too.”
The Washington Post News Service