Chapter 29
Other Obstacles
Best Friends Without Benefits
When best friends have known each other too long platonically and one falls in love with the other, the transition can be tricky. Sometimes impossible.
When Harry Met Sally was a classic in this genre, (written by Nora Ephron). In fact they are trying to prove that a man and a woman can’t be friends without sexual tension messing things up. It turns out to be a failed experiment.
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987, written and directed by John Hughes) is set in high school. Keith’s (Eric Stolz) best friend is the tomboy drummer Watts played by Mary Stuart Masterson. Keith has his eye on a pretty girl, Amanda Jones (played by Lea Thompson), so of course Keith’s best friend Watts helps him out by organizing his date, playing the limo chauffeur and practicing kissing to make sure he knows what he’s doing. Nobody’s rooting for Amanda Jones here. Keith may be blind, but he’s the only one.
The Duff (2015, Josh A. Cagan, adapting Kody Keplinger’s novel) has high school girl Bianca Piper (Mae Whitman) crushing on Toby (Nick Eversman) while never considering her best friend since toddlerhood and boy next door Wesley (Robbie Amell), whom she thinks is stupid and kind of a man whore. Turns out he’s not that stupid and the other thing can be grown out of.
Distance
Sleepless in Seattle has would-be lovers living 3,000 miles apart. Oh, and they haven’t met each other. But we are rooting for them nonetheless.
Like Crazy (2011, written by Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones) is a college romance between an American college student (Anton Yelchin) and an English exchange student (Felicity Jones) who are torn apart when she is banned from coming back to the U.S. after overstaying her student visa.
Physical distance can be a real obstacle. So can distance in time.
Time
This has become something of a sub-genre. They’d be perfect for each other … if they lived in the same century. Popular examples are:
Kate and Leopold (2001, James Mangold and Steven Rogers from Rogers’ story). Meg Ryan’s Kate is from now. Hugh Jackman’s Leopold is from a couple of hundred years ago. Liev Schreiber finds a hole in the time/space fabric and presto. Inter-century love blooms.
Somewhere in Time (1980, Richard Matheson adapting his own novel). Christopher Reeve goes back in time to find a woman (Jane Seymour) whose photograph he has fallen in love with. This story was inspired by the stunning Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. With a beautiful score by John Barry.
The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009, Bruce Joel Rubin adapting the novel by Audrey Niffenegger). Eric Bana’s Henry comes unstuck in time and can show up naked anywhere, any time. Rachel McAdams plays his true love Clare to whom he first appeared when she was a little girl.
The Lake House (2006, screenplay by David Auburn, adapted from the South Korean film Il Mare or Siworae). Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are the lovers separated by time.
I think these all work pretty well except for the last one. They are two years apart in time? And she can’t Google him? A renowned architect? Really? I think this story might have worked if it had taken place before computers were in every home. But for all of these time-challenged couples, Time itself is an obstacle.
Difference in Class/Station
It is seen less often in current times, but this obstacle has frequently been used to good effect in period love stories.
Sometimes it’s the lord’s daughter and the chauffeur as in Downton Abbey (created by Julian Fellowes) and sometimes it’s the chauffeur’s daughter and the son of the manor as in Sabrina.
In Dirty Dancing, Baby (Jennifer Grey) was one of the resort’s summer guests while Johnny (Patrick Swayze) was an employee and dance teacher there, and from a decidedly lower-class background.
My Fair Lady, adapted from the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, is not a typical love story, but it is one nonetheless. In it the upper-crust gentleman Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) becomes attached to the cockney flower girl, Eliza Dolittle (Audrey Hepburn), whom he has been training to speak like a duchess. And she has come to care for him as well. It takes a bit of internal wrestling for him to come to the realization that she has become essential to his happiness, but luckily the heart triumphs over the snobby old mind.
In Jane Eyre (adapted many, many times from the novel by Charlotte Brontë), Mr. Rochester is the lord of the manor who falls in love with the governess, Jane.
In a modern setting it’s the rich boy who falls for the poor girl or vice versa. Notting Hill’s film star (Julia Roberts) falls for the owner of a little book shop who has no money or status of any kind, played by Hugh Grant.
In Mystic Pizza (1988, screenplay by Amy Jones and Perry Howze based on Jones’s story), the rich boy is drawn to the Portuguese local girl who works at the pizza place, also played by Julia Roberts, this time on the flip side.
Even though this is the twenty-first century, this difference in status can still be an obstacle.
Religion
Like class, religion used to be a bigger barrier than it is today, but it can still work if the setup is believable.
In Ivanhoe, the wounded knight (Robert Taylor/Anthony Andrews) falls in love with the beautiful Jewess Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor/Olivia Hussey), but both lovers understand that it can go nowhere because of the difference in their faiths. In twelfth-century medieval England. When burning people at the stake was popular.
In Witness, Rachel (Kelly McGillis) is an Amish woman and Harrison Ford’s John Book is, well, the complete opposite of Amish. He’s an inner-city urban homicide detective. One who tries to fit into her world in Amish country while he’s hiding out, but can’t convert to her faith.
In Bend it Like Beckham (2002, written by Gurinder Chadha, Guljit Bindra, and Paul Mayeda Berges), Parminder Nagra’s Jess is a Sikh from an Indian family living in London. When she falls in love with her coach played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, it is a big problem for her family and her whole expat community.
Even today, religious differences can be a real obstacle.
Birds and Fish
They may fall in love but where do they build a nest? When lovers are from different worlds this can be a huge obstacle.
Several films have human men falling in love with females who live underwater.
The Little Mermaid (1989, written by John Musker and Ron Clements from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale). The animated musical from Disney Studios.
Splash (1984, written by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, and Bruce Jay Friedman) has Tom Hanks’s human Allen falling in love with Daryl Hannah’s Madison the Mermaid. The ad line was, “Allen Bauer thought he’d never find the right woman. He was only half wrong.”
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994, John Sayles’ screenplay from Rosalie K. Fry’s book), the Irish film of the legendary silkie, the seal who can shed its skin and become a beautiful woman.
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948, screenplay by Nunnally Johnson from the novel by Constance and Guy Jones), where predating all the others, it was William Powell who had a fishy girl in his swimming pool (Ann Blyth).
Shifting from the sea to the sky, our protagonist might literally be an angel who falls in love with a mortal woman living on earth. The beautiful German film Wings of Desire (1987, written by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger), with Bruno Ganz as the angel, is a touching example. It was remade less successfully as City of Angels (1998, same writers plus Dana Stevens) with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. This was partly a casting problem, I think. Bruno Ganz had heart and wisdom in his eyes. Kindness, gentleness. He looked like someone who had known heaven and who loved a woman enough to give it up. But Nic Cage? If you saw him dressed all in black coming toward you in a deserted hospital corridor at 3 A.M., would you think Angel? Me neither. My first thought would be vampire. Second serial killer. Third biker. But angel? Not so much.
When people live in different worlds, you can use the Bird/Fish obstacle to make things hard for them. Which is what we’re after here.
Gay Cowboys in Wyoming
Sometimes the culture people live in prohibits the connection. In Brokeback Mountain (2005, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapting Annie Proulx’s story), the rural cowboy culture has no tolerance for gay men. Someone may be killed for crossing this line.
Racial prejudice falls into the category.
The Loving Story (2011) is a documentary that tells the story of real-life married couple Richard and Mildred Loving. A black woman and white man who lived in Virginia in 1958, a time when interracial marriage was against the law. The feature film Loving (2016, written and directed by Jeff Nichols) is based on that same case (starring Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton) which went all the way to the Supreme Court and changed laws nationwide.
There have been many films where racial difference was the obstacle to union.
A Patch of Blue (1965, Guy Green adapting Elizabeth Kata’s novel), in which a blind girl (Elizabeth Hartman) doesn’t realize that the man she is falling in love with is black (Sidney Poitier). It is also the obstacle (also with Poitier) in:
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967, screenplay by William Rose) starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey as Katharine Houghton’s parents. More recently:
Love Field (written by Don Roos, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert) was made in 1992 but took place in 1963.
Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was made in 2002 but set in the 1950s. In it Julianne Moore plays a wife who falls in love with the black gardener, also played by Dennis Haysbert.
Sexual orientation provides the obstacle for films such as:
Boys Don’t Cry (1999, written by Kimberly Peirce and Andy Bienen), an Oscar winner and career launcher for Hilary Swank, and
Soldier’s Girl (2003 written by Ron Nyswaner).
Maurice (1987, James Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey adapting E.M. Forster’s novel) is the Merchant/Ivory English period piece set in Edwardian times about boys who fall in love at university, then one goes straight and the other stays true to himself. At a time in England when a man might go to prison for years for making love to another man.
Death
When one of them is no longer living this is a problem. Sometimes the couple was in love before the death.
Catch and Release (2006, written and directed by Susannah Grant) and P.S. I Love You (2007, screenplay by Richard LaGravanese and Steven Rogers from Cecelia Ahern’s novel) are both about women who have lost their fiancé/husband (Jennifer Garner and Hilary Swank, respectively) who can’t let go of their beloved men who have died. Fortunately they are consoled, eventually, by Timothy Olyphant and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Life does go on.
Sometimes it’s the dead husbands who won’t let go. Kiss Me Goodbye (1982, screenplay by Charlie Peters) has Sally Field about to marry her new beau, played by Jeff Bridges, when her charming dead husband played by James Caan comes back from the dead, deciding he’s not finished being her charming, song and dance, irreplaceable man. It is a loose translation of Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, 1976, with Sonia Braga as the widow who is trying to make a new life with a new man, but her dead husband won’t stay in the ground. He keeps showing up in her life and in her bed, and this complicates things.
Ghost (1990, screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin) reunites Demi Moore with her dead husband Patrick Swayze. They have unfinished business to take care of so they can finally let each other go. Not all love stories have happy endings. Especially when one of the pair is no longer living.
In Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990, written by Anthony Minghella), Juliet Stevenson’s Nina’s longing for her dead husband Jamie (Alan Rickman) literally brings him back from the dead. And even the most die-hard romantics among us know it can’t last.
What Dreams May Come (1998, Ron Bass adapting Richard Matheson’s novel) has Chris (Robin Williams), after he’s been killed suddenly, watching his family from the other side. When his wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra) is driven to suicide by her grief, Chris follows her into the darkest regions of purgatory to bring her out of there. Or maybe it’s limbo. In any case, their deaths, his by accident, hers by choice, are an almost insurmountable problem to their being together, but love triumphs in the end.
And sometimes the lovers meet after one of them has died. In The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947, Philip Dunne adapting R.A. Dick’s novel), Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) rents a seaside house that is haunted by a sea captain (Rex Harrison) who used to own it. And in spite of all odds, they fall in love.
This may be the biggest obstacle of all. But love stories have found ways to overcome even the ultimate divider.
Fear of Commitment
We saw a lot of these love stories in the sixties, seventies, and even the eighties. When birth control became inexpensive and accessible, unplanned pregnancy and shotgun weddings went out, and this genre cropped up.
Holly Golightly played by Audrey Hepburn in the ever popular Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961, George Axelrod adapting Truman Capote’s novella) was one such girl who ran from commitment as fast as her kicky heels could take her.
Most of the handsome leading men in those days played a few versions of the swinging bachelor who won’t be tied down. Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Clark Gable, David Niven, Frank Sinatra, and Gig Young, and this barely scratches the surface of that swinging iceberg. Some actors we didn’t believe were that type of man, and so they rarely played these roles (Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, etc.).
Then there was Alfie, played first in the swinging sixties by Michael Caine (1966, Bill Naughton adapting his play), then in 2004 the swinging was taken over by Jude Law (Naughton, now joined by Elaine Pope and Charles Shyer). The ad line for this movie was “Meet a man who never met a woman he didn’t love: Alfie.”
Sex and the City (1998–2004 created by Darren Star) seemed to be peopled almost entirely by sophisticated Manhattan singles who wanted everything but commitment. It was hardly even surprising when the man who is obviously perfect for you broke up with you via Post-it note.
Sex and the City also brought a new phrase into our common vocabulary about this commitment resistance: “He’s just not that into you.” And it became a movie called He’s Just Not That Into You (2009, screenplay by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein from the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo), which was about this very commitment phobia thing.
They don’t have to be out-and-out playboys for this problem to work. One person’s aversion to being in a relationship and then falling in love in spite of it can be obstacle enough.
Addiction
When one or both lovers are addicted to drugs or alcohol, it can be a love-challenging and even life-killing problem.
There are redemption stories about nearly lost souls who recover with the help of love, or who bravely transcend addiction in order to win love.
Tender Mercies (1983, written by Horton Foote who won an Oscar for this, and also one for the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1963), starring Robert Duvall and Tess Harper, is one such story of a man, over the hill, drinking himself to death, who meets a woman who makes him want to be a better man. It won a Best Actor Oscar for Duvall and this was nominated for Best Picture as well. American audiences do love their redemption stories.
More recently Jeff Bridges played a similarly challenged good old boy in Crazy Heart. He falls in love with Maggie Gyllenhaal, and who can blame him, and it eventually wins him a new start in life, if not the girl. It won an Oscar for Jeff as well.
Sometimes the addiction obstacle can take down one or both of the lovers in movies like
Leaving Las Vegas (1995, bad for the alcoholic, but an Oscar win for Nicolas Cage and a nomination for Elisabeth Shue),
Blow (2001, David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes adapting Bruce Porter’s book), with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz, and
Panic in Needle Park (1971, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne adapting the book by James Mills), with Al Pacino and heroin addicts in New York City. Other films about relationships in the midst of addiction and rehab include
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994, written by Ronald Bass and Al Franken), with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia, and
28 Days (2000, written by Susannah Grant), with Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortensen, and Dominic West.
The choices for Obstacles for your potential lovers are vast. You can even combine them. The alcoholic who is also afraid of commitment. The wealthy duke who falls for the working girl and happens to live in the wrong century. Or the guy who realizes he’s in love with his best friend, but unfortunately he’s dead.
Your choice. Enjoy the ride.