Rom Com Monday

Has any movie genre been more misunderstood than the romantic comedy? Dismissed by critics as inferior and condescendingly described as chick flicks and guilty pleasures, but what’s wrong with feel-good and a glimmer of hope? Especially these day…

In literature, it’s fairytales that teach children about the world. In cinema, it’s romcoms that teach us about what the world could be like. There is no shortage of romantic movies, even though the style and the genre has often changed throughout film history… and even though the quality isn’t always assured. In film criticism the death of the romcom has been proclaimed for years. We won’t comment on whether that’s true, but what we do know: the heyday of the romcom was the 90s and early 00s. For our ROMCOM MONDAY, De Cinema selects three milestones from these glory days: Gurinder Chadha’s BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (2002), Nora Ephron’s YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998) and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s LOVE & BASKETBALL (2000).

On this Easter Monday, we not only celebrate the underappreciated genre, but also the women who show the (film) world how it’s done:

Gurinder Chadha, Nora Ephron and Gina Prince-Bythewood not only directed their movies, but wrote the screenplay as well. In their stories, the writer-directors are very open and they often find inspiration in their own experiences. For example, Nora Ephron and her sister Delia (who co-wrote the screenplay of YOU’VE GOT MAIL) spent their childhood in bookshops, LOVE & BASKETBALL was based on Gina Prince-Bythewood’s experiences as a competitive track runner at UCLA and Gurinder Chadha’s movies explore the lives of Indian women in England and how they navigate their traditional and modern cultures.

On Easter Monday, the 6th of April, De Cinema is thé place to recover from the chocolate overload with a triad of Love, Games & Girl Power!

Part of our SPOTLIGHT ON WOMXN DIRECTORS.