Recently I sat down to watch something on Netflix and
stumbled across a strange movie I’d never heard of called Love.com. I soon learned the reason why I’d never heard of it was
because it’s from Brazil .
The basic premise of the film is that a fashion vlogger and a video game
vlogger fall in love. It’s your classic opposites attract rom-com story and
mostly follows the same basic structure of guy gets girl, guy loses girl, guy
gets girl back with a few superficial differences.
Now at this point some of you are probably asking why the
hell I watched some rote Brazilian romantic comedy, and there are many possible
answers. Perhaps I was looking for the Netflix series, Love, and watched this by mistake. Maybe the idea of a geek getting
together with a beautiful woman held a perverse appeal for me. Or it could be
that I’m secretly a sucker for a cheesy love story. But the reason I’m going
with is that I have an anthropological interest in how other cultures approach
genre fiction in the Information Era. Yep, that’s definitely the reason. As a
result this will be less of a review and more of an analysis of different
thematic elements in the film and how it plays with the various tropes and
trappings of the genre.
Cheek Kissing
Characters in this movie always kiss each other on both
cheeks when greeting one another. I know this has nothing to do with anything,
but for some reason I always thought this practice was exclusive to European
countries that speak romance languages. I have no clue why I didn’t think that they’d
import it with them upon colonization, but there you go. It was a real
eye-opener for me.
Geek Culture
Like most American writers, it turns out that Brazilian
writers also don’t seem to know what geek culture actually is or how nerds
interact with one another. The male lead exhibits all the common tropes: he
lives with his mom, his bedroom is filled with comic books and action figures
from floor to ceiling, he loses his goddamn mind over video games (thanks for
that new stereotype, Pewdiepie), and of course he’s naturally a l33t hacker. Oh
yeah, you better believe this movie has a hacking sequence and its as dumb as
anything you see on CSI. I’m not even going to bother with the details of it.
Perhaps the best example of how this movie doesn’t get it is
a scene where the male lead (Fernando) and his friends go to a cosplay party
along with the female lead (Katrina) and her sister. For those of you
unfamiliar with the concept, that’s when a bunch of geeks go to a nightclub
dressed as characters from movies, comic books, TV, or video games. I’ll admit,
I’d never heard of this practice, probably because I’ve never really cosplayed,
but it seems like something that we’d do. I’m guessing the writers are in the
same boat I’m in, but with even less of a clue of what might actually happen at
such an event. Fernando and company go in dressed as… I honestly have no idea.
They wear brown robes and random masks and don’t look like anything. The
patrons without speaking lines dress as recognizable characters, but nobody
else does. All the food and beverages have geek themed names, which I’ll be
honest is a thing that absolutely would happen. There’s music and people
swaying around awkwardly because nerds don’t dance obviously, I guess. Since
dancing isn’t a thing, the main form of entertainment at this “party” seems to
be a stage where people impotently wave lightsabers at one another. That sure
is…something… that nobody over the age of ten would consider a fun way to spend
the night. Then Katrina shows up dressed as what the movie assure us is a
zombie, Fernando admits that he’s turned on by it, and then they laugh and make
out. So I guess that makes him a necrophiliac and she’s totally on board on
with it. Nerds, amirite!
The only thing the movie comes close to getting right,
though I feel this was mostly accidental, is how geeks tend to handle romance
in a decidedly childish ways. That being said, I have plenty of geeky friends
who are perfectly capable of dealing with relation-ships in an adult manner. Then
I go online and lose much faith in my kind, and I see these attitudes reflected
in Fernando. He makes no attempt to cross the bridge into Katrina’s world
despite her repeated attempts to cross into his (as seen above). He also
doesn’t seem to respect what she does for a living and views her as a frivolous
and vain woman. He also does a number of other immature things that I’ll get
into later, but suffice to say he’s not the most understanding character.
Whether he was written like this in an attempt to be realistic, or just to move
the plot along I’m not entirely certain.
Girl Gets Guy
By now you can probably gather that Katrina is the star of
this show, and indeed she’s the one who moves the story forward. As the
sub-header suggests, this is the first and arguably most important inversion of
the classic formula. She is the one who chases after Fernando, kisses him,
initiates a romantic relationship, and is the driving force behind it. She is
the active agent in this movie and that’s reflected in her characterization. While Fernando is in
many ways portrayed as a stereotypical nerd, Katrina’s fashionista is significantly
more nuanced which I found to be quite refreshing since most Hollywood
films tend to go the easy route. She is not presented as being frivolous, vain,
or loose, but is instead shown to be kind, smart, charismatic, and
open-minded. Her focus on self-image is
motivated by ambition not narcissism; she’s using her vlog as a ladder to climb
into the fashion industry and fulfill her dream of becoming a designer. Thus
far she seems to have been quite successful at it having racked up multiple
sponsors, a devoted following, and a swanky pad. Fernando’s life is dismal in
comparison even if he is happy with it. So what on Earth does Katrina see in
him? As we shall soon learn, even the movie seems to have trouble answering
this question.
Relationship Montage
After they hook up for the first time we are treated to a
classic “the relationship progresses” montage. While most movies do this by
showing them going out on dates, cracking jokes, moving in together, meeting
friends and family, or having sexual misadventures (ostensibly with the purpose
of demonstrating the chemistry between the leads), Love.com takes a different route. Instead we see Fernando and Katrina
laughing about nothing before making out. This is then repeated approximately
five to ten times in slightly different settings. I have thought of two
possible reasons for this: 1. This is how healthy, normal relationships are
commonly portrayed in Brazilian culture. 2. The filmmakers had no clue what a
relationship between two such polar opposites would actually look like and so
resorted to just having them suck face for a few minutes. I’ll let you decide
which one you think it is.
Guy Loses Girl
I’ll admit, I may have been a little too hard on Fernando up
until now. By no means is he a bad guy. He’s generally rather sweet, is clearly
intelligent, and is quite handsome for a geek. However, that does not excuse
him from the general disdain he holds for Katrina’s lifestyle, a disdain which
precipitates the inevitable breakup where the film adheres most strongly to the
rom-com formula.
The inciting incident is when Fernando takes a picture of
her without permission while she is sleeping and posts it online. It should be
noted that Katrina broke up with her previous boyfriend for pretty much the
exact same reason, and Fernando is well aware of this. Plus, does he really
need to be told that its creepy to do that? Katrina is obviously incensed,
partly because she makes her living off of looking her best and nobody looks
their best in the morning before they wake up, and partly because she loses a
sponsorship deal as a result of a rival product being visible in the picture. Fernando
counters that such petty concerns as her career don’t really matter leading to
an explosive argument that begets more creepy behaviour on Fernando’s part,
begetting more arguments, and finally the split.
Now I suppose the movie is trying to make the point that
Katrina is fixated on her career and online image at the expense of her real
life relationships (her only confidante appears to be her sister), but its hard
to see her as anything other than the offended party in this situation. For all
her strengths, perhaps Katrina’s flaws could have used a little more attention
in the same way that the reverse is true for Fernando.
Girl Inexplicably
Takes Guy Back
With the split out of the way, the movie now needs to find
an excuse to bring them back together, and this is where the film’s inability
to justify their romance comes to the fore. While I am very much invested in
Katrina and to a lesser degree invested in Fernando, I just don’t care all that
much about their relationship. There just doesn’t seem to be any real chemistry
between their characters. The only reason we’re given for Katrina’s affection
towards Fernando is that he helped her out one time by hacking away those
compromising pictures (maybe he has a good penis?). He seems to love her simply
because she’s hot. Its just not enough for me to care if they get back
together, and the haphazard and sudden way they do pull it off doesn’t help
matters much.
In brief, Katrina coincidentally overhears a conversation
between people she’d been hoping to work with, learning that the recent
advancements she thought she’d made in her career were illusory. For some
reason this prompts her to make an “inspirational” video about being yourself.
Fernando sees this and for some reason this inspires him to work harder at his
vlogging career to win her back. He has some success with his career, but not
so much in his attempts to contact her. He sends her a video that presumably
expresses his feelings, but she ignores it. Luckily it just so happens that his
friend and Katrina’s sister have randomly been set up on a blind date and the
leads are both roped into coming in case it goes south. They unexpectedly and
awkwardly meet with Fernando stating that he feels the video was made for him.
Katrina replies that it wasn’t (no shit) and its made clear that although she
is heartbroken she has made the decision to move on, and to that effect is
going to Milan
to study for a few years. She leaves, but then decides to watch his video which
proves to be what I presumed. This somehow succeeds in winning her over, he
runs up and asks to go to Milan
with her, they kiss, the credits roll.
The point of this not at all brief summary is to demonstrate
how random and forced their reunion is, although to be fair this is far from
the only rom-com to take this route. The main difference is that I can’t
suspend my disbelief to conclude that these characters would or should get back
together based on what’s been presented. Nothing about it feels natural to me. Perhaps
this is simply because of my misunderstanding of Brazilian culture, but it may
also be rooted in the movie’s use of technology and social media to bring the
lovers together. The video Fernando sends to Katrina is Love.com’s equivalent of the Grand Gesture of Reconciliation seen
in many other rom-coms, updated for the 21st century. Perhaps I’m
just old, but this gesture seems to fall short and comes off as lame and
uninspired. Why should this video change Katrina’s mind and cause her to
re-evaluate their affair? In the end this Beauty and the Geek fantasy appears
to be just that.
Wait, You Forgot the
Comedy
You may have noticed that this analysis has focused almost
exclusively on the romantic half of the romantic-comedy genre, but have no
fear, I haven’t forgotten the comedy half, although I can’t say the same for
this movie. To be fair, comedy is notoriously difficult to translate so I’ll
give Love.com some benefit of the
doubt and assume most of the jokes went over my head. The only character with
any funny lines that I could glean is Fernando’s friend, Panda, who you can
tell exists for comic relief because his name is fucking Panda. Oddly enough,
Fernando also has a friend who’s an aspiring stand-up comic, but who never gets
to tell any jokes insofar as I can tell.
Situational comedy has an easier time crossing the language
barrier as anyone can feel the pain and awkwardness of having your mom walk in
on you as you’re about to get it on, and this movie mines that particular
comedy gold on two separate occasions. I can only assume that this is an all
too common occurrence in Brazil .
I will admit, that the first time it happens and the mom hurriedly leaves then
re-enters to introduce herself was the funniest moment in the movie. Otherwise,
there’s a mildly amusing scene where Katrina barges into a men’s locker room to
confront her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend over the aforementioned photos, but that’s
about it for humour. This film was much more concerned with the first half of
the “romantic comedy”, which can perhaps be traced back to the popularity of
the telenovela which tend to be light on (intentional) laughs.
Final Thoughts
As you can probably gather, by no means do I consider
this film to be good, but its not terrible either. Its kind of fun in its own
guilty pleasure sort of way, and the female lead is stronger than average for
the genre. My enjoyment was primarily hampered by a general lack of
understanding of geekdom, though 
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