the groundhog day project

If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’, I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible. – G. K. Chesterton In his review of The Mirror Has Two Faces , Roger Ebert writes, “It's rare to find a film that deals intelligently with issues of sex and love, instead of just assuming that everyone on the screen and in the audience shares the same popular culture assumptions.” While he may be correct on the first point, I think he’s wrong on the second. I think The Mirror Has Two Faces operates on the very same assumptions that most any romantic comedy does: that we all want romance, that men and women are supposed to couple and copulate and consummate marriage. Plus, remember (as I’ve already referenced them a couple times) Dowd and Pallott...

I want to get into talking about Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect Styles , but it’s hard to map it onto The Mirror Has Two Faces . Gregory is hardly the stereotypical male that Tannen talks about, nor really is Rose the stereotypical female that Tannen talks about. Tannen’s male wants status—meaning he wants the score that comes from having bedded a woman. Gregory is far from that, wanting anything but the score. Tannen’s female wants connection, but Rose gets the connection and wants more... Arguably. The question is—and this may just be a reiteration of my attempt to define the successful relationship the other day —does a connection include or preclude sex? Personally, I think it’s inclusive, and The Mirror Has Two Faces seems to support that idea even if Gregory and Rose have still not consummated their relationship at the end of the film. When Harry Met Sally... comes to the same conclusion (including the sex) thought it approaches it from a more stereotypical direction; that i...

“In coming up...” A Freudian slip about six minutes into the film. Candy has sat down at the library presentation Greg’s giving about his book. Gregory is flustered by her presence and, more specifically, her legs. He quickly corrects his wording to “In summing up” but the damage is done. A movie that deliberately avoids actual sex, The Mirror Has Two Faces is understandably full of references to sex, suggestive language... double entendre and innuendo. Like, after Claire’s wedding, Rose tells Doris, “I’d like it if someone knew me...” And she pauses just long enough, for me, that I think biblically, before she gets more literal. (Sidenote: I just wondered aloud if Gregory just picked Rose because she taught at the same school he does. And, I also asked where he put his ad. And, Saer says from nearby, “Stop Groundhog Day ing this.”) Gregory invites Rose up to his apartment. Not, of course, for sex. “Not unless you’re planning to use it on something else other than his neck.” Do...

The Mirror Has Two Faces includes numerous mirrors. Shocker, I know. The first mirror: Rose’s opening scene. She pulls a Sno Ball out of the drawer, takes a big bite, and in the mirror we see her with a facial mask on. Very cinematically feminine, snacking on junkfood stashed secretly—reminds me of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson in The Closer , though that came later—while readying for a date. But , then there’s a baseball right by her hand, the Sno Ball juxtaposed with the baseball, two sides of her character framed within the mirror. And, she has to then choose between those two things a moment later, and she chooses to cancel her date (feigning illness) to watch the baseball game. It’s not a literal mirror, but when Candy leaves Gregory’s apartment, he asks if he can call her. Her response: “What for?” When Rose leaves him (the second time), he also asks if he can call her ? Her response: “What for?” Another mirror: before Claire’s wedding, Rose in the pink bridesmaid dress, ...

It isn’t that Greg wants something that’s impossible. I mean, plenty of people spend their lives without sex, without physical intimacy. Of course, plenty of people probably live without companionship as well. We just can’t all have all the good things in life. Regular companionship would be nice, even if there weren’t sex. Not that I would go for Greg’s notion of excluding it outright. A personal anecdote—you know, because that’s so rare for me: being married doesn’t guarantee either of those things, sex or companionship. Long before we separated, my wife and I had our moments of one or the other, or neither. Unlike Groundhog Day ’s Phil Connors (pre- and early-loop anyway), I never really wanted casual sex. But, unlike The Mirror Has Two Faces ’ Greg Larkin, I also don’t want companionship without. I broke down the successful relationship yesterday into four parts: sexual, intellectual, spiritual and emotional. Those last two are so close together the way I see it, I’m not sure why...

The Mirror Has Two Faces plays like a regular romantic comedy—guy meets girl, guy like girls (or girl likes guy), some manufactured obstacle shows up, but eventually they find each other anyway and all is wonderful. But, it does its darnedest to deconstruct the genre along the way just enough to stand out from the crowd. Still, even as Greg is expressing antiromantic sentiment, scenes play out, visually especially, just like they would in any romantic comedy. Take the proposal scene for instance. Greg and Rose are walking in the park, he’s got something to ask her, so they sit on a bench. They are framed close together on the screen and if not for the exact wording of his proposal and her briefly negative reaction, it looks like any proposal scene in a romantic comedy might look. At the start of the movie, as I mentioned yesterday , Rose is involved in her sister’s wedding. Meanwhile, Greg’s ex hits him up for some relatively meaningless sex before she sees her new boyfriend again. ...

This entry will be short, probably. First night with a new movie, I want to watch it before I really write about it. Plus, if you need a lot of words, read yesterday’s entry again. I’ve only ever seen The Mirror Has Two Faces once all the way through. One of my sisters loves it, and made me watch it. I didn’t die. Of course, to be fair, I think I’ve said before I will watch most any movie at least once. But, sometimes I see a film because of someone else, something I wouldn’t have seen otherwise... Hell, sometimes I do things I wouldn’t do if not for someone else. That’s life. That’s married life, especially. That last line wasn’t supposed to sound negative. In fact, it’s probably far more positive than negative. Being in a relationship, being married—you do plenty of stuff that single people probably wouldn’t be bothered with. The Mirror Has Two Faces presents marriage like an obstacle to... not love, exactly, but certainly romance. Marriage is often presented as the culminat...