Review: Modern Romance

Nearly as much as Jerry Lewis, Albert Brooks’s comic persona is defined by its unlikability.

Modern Romance
Photo: Columbia Pictures

Nearly as much as Jerry Lewis, Albert Brooks’s comic persona is defined by its unlikability. Instead of the little-guy identification of Chaplin or Keaton, he opts for inquiries of aggrieved male neediness, rigorously free of soothing cuteness. The grim self-absorption that abducted the camera’s mock-documentary focus in his earlier Real Life takes center stage in Modern Romance, a romantic comedy where the romance is perpetually on the verge of destruction. Brooks reveals what he’s learned from working with Martin Scorsese with the opening camera movement, and the diner breakup that follows reveals what he’s taught Larry David, Neil LaBute, et al. “I do love you, love’s got nothing to do with it,” neurotic film editor Robert (Brooks) says to girlfriend Mary (Kathryn Harrold) before the food arrives, and when she angrily walks out he’s left wondering why she couldn’t wait until after the meal. “You Are So Beautiful” is used as a jazz riff for the opening credits, although Brooks’s compulsively selfish character only allows for the beauty of his own misery as the post-rupture blues settle in and he pads his apartment in purposefully agonizing real time, Quaaluded and paranoid, dissing his answering machine, praising his record collection, and promising himself a new life. The new life lasts about two hours, until his shell cracks and, desperate to win her back, he hits the supermarket for make-up gifts (“Do any apologize?”). The filmmaker’s ruthless scrutiny of his character’s irrational jealously unexpectedly marks the movie as a distant relative of Él, just as Brooks’s style can be as deceptively simple as Buñuel’s. Mary wonders if Robert can tell “real love” from “movie love,” before he says he can and woos her with a line from Easy Rider; to further the self-reflexivity, Brooks shows us the nuts and bolts of the medium itself, his character adding sounds to images in the editing room with fellow film-cutter Bruno Kirby, as if educating the critics who cannot gauge how cinematic his work can be. The finale set at a mountain cabin, with the pair’s romantic getaway crumbling under the heft of Brooks’s obsession, provides both punchline and culmination to the hilarious-cum-harrowing investigation. It’s telling that Stanley Kubrick was a fan of the film, for the shot of Robert watching from the cabin window as Mary makes a phone call could have come right out of The Shining.

Score: 
 Cast: Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Tyann Means, Bruno Kirby, Jane Hallaren, Karen Chandler, Bob Einstein, James L. Brooks, George Kennedy  Director: Albert Brooks  Screenwriter: Albert Brooks, Monica Mcgowan Johnson  Distributor: Columbia Pictures  Running Time: 93 min  Rating: R  Year: 1981  Buy: Video

Fernando F. Croce

Fernando F. Croce is a San Francisco-based film writer whose work has been published in Film Comment, Reverse Shot, MUBI, and Fandor. He runs the website CinePassion.

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