THE BREAK-UP
It seems
a little awkward to say so given that its stars, Vince Vaughn and Jennifer
Aniston, are currently a hot item on the gossip sheets – latest reports have
them planning a secret wedding, possibly in France – but The Break-Up
suffers from a plausibility gap: not in the breaking-up, but the
coming-together. How could these two people fall in love – not in a one-night
stand, with its recklessness and lower expectations, but a meaningful, long-term
relationship? They even buy a house together!
We know,
of course, that opposites attract – and I guess, with a little goodwill, we
can find an emotional through-line. Jen (i.e. her character) works in a ritzy
art-gallery, owned by a domineering diva with haughty raised eyebrows and a
penchant for sketching male models au naturel; already there’s a
masochistic streak in our heroine, happy to be ruled by a stronger force. Vince
(i.e. his character) is a working-class lunk who works as a tour-guide in a
company he owns with his two brothers; even his job involves telling people what
to think (Jen’s philosophy, on the other hand, is that customers shouldn’t
buy paintings unless they feel it in their bones). They meet at a baseball game
and Vince does all the running, all but forcing himself on her. She’s with
someone else but he tears her away, talking nineteen to the dozen about
commitment and Stone Age men inventing fire.
I think
he’s supposed to be charming, but in fact he seems a little deranged. Things
don’t improve once the two are a couple. They have little in common (“We
don’t go anywhere together,” she points out); he likes baseball, she likes
the ballet. To say he’s old-fashioned would be putting it kindly; in fact, his
idea of domestic bliss is to watch the game on TV while she cooks and cleans. He
doesn’t even like her working (outside the home). After a party, she does the
dishes; he plays a videogame.
Actually,
I guess I should backtrack. The relationship isn’t implausible per se;
indeed, much of the film’s charm comes from how sadly familiar these roles are
– the needy woman and the selfish lout, the doormat and the ‘man’s man’.
What’s implausible is the film’s contention that this relationship is
basically happy (as opposed to toxic), at least if Vince became a little more
caring and Jen became a little more assertive. Thus, when she wails “I don’t
want to break up with him” it’s supposed to be heartfelt emotion, not
a woman in denial. And when he comes home after their big fight, and we see Jen
in bed waiting tensely, it’s shot so she’s right on the edge of frame, with
an empty space beside her. All he has to do is fill that space and everything
(presumably) will be all right. Alas, he elects to sleep on the sofa, and the
bad vibes continue.
In the
end, it’s a simple problem: The Break-Up tackles a painful subject, but
doesn’t want to cause any pain. You can still make comedy out of messy
divorces but it needs to be black comedy, as in The War of the Roses (1989)
where bickering escalated into all-out war, the not-so-happy couple finally
demolishing their lovely home as well as each other. This is more like The
Odd Couple, with prim Jen and slobbish Vince fighting over too much clutter
in the living-room – yet, unlike the old Hollywood ‘remarriage comedies’
(films like The Philadelphia Story (1940)) where the couple seemed
compatible if only they could come to their senses, here the couple are so
broadly-drawn they become caricatures. A break-up might be just the thing for
them, and Jen seems weirdly self-destructive when she turns down a date with a
rich, eligible bachelor near the end of the film, holding on to her masochistic
memories of the tattered relationship.