Why we love the ‘if only’ rom-com
Impostor romances like Working Girl conjure fantasy of possibilities
Working Girl, which turned 30 last month, opens with a close-up of the Statue of Liberty over the drumbeat of its Oscar-winning theme song. Kevin Wade was inspired to write the film while looking across New York harbour at that symbol of freedom, as passengers poured off the Staten Island Ferry and into the steel towers of the financial district.
Tess, played by Melanie Griffith, is one of those ferry commuters, a secretary who slips from sneakers into heels at her desk, who takes night classes, reads the society pages and tries to ditch her heavy New York accent. When her backstabbing boss goes out of town, she decides to take over her office, her apartment and her US$6000 ($8939) cocktail dresses.
“It was an immigrant story first and foremost,” Wade says. A commuter as an immigrant — a stranger trying to assimilate in a strange land of mergers and acquisitions.
Why do I love this movie whose premise seem to relate little to my life? The reason, I’ve realised, has a lot to do with the appeal of the impostor romantic comedy, a genre that includes the likes of Roman Holiday and Tootsie.
The main character takes on a new persona, one that allows them to break from the constraints holding them back — a powerful metaphor for what we want in life and love.
“There’s a fantasy or maybe a deep-seated wish that, ‘If only I could go out in the world in a way different from me, I would be accepted, and what I think is of value about me wouldn’t be questioned,”’ says Wade, who also wrote the impostor rom-com Maid in Manhattan.
Working Girl is strikingly similar to Big, which I watched again when director Penny Marshall died this month. Teenager Josh wakes up one morning as Tom Hanks — and moves from the suburbs to Manhattan big business.
Both 1988 movies are what happened when the rom-com golden age collided with the ambition and yuppie snobbery we see in Wall Street. After their transformations, both protagonists flourish professionally, as they’re pursued by successful but troubled executives (Harrison Ford and Elizabeth Perkins) enlivened by these fish out of water.
They each have a best friend who reminds them of who they were in their old life. Working Girl’s BFF is Joan Cusack, nominated for an Oscar with Griffith and Sigourney Weaver.
They each endure a romantic disappointment that sparks their impersonation — Alec Baldwin is the cheating boyfriend, and Josh’s crush. As in many good rom-coms, mutual respect at work fuels the romance, as the couple heads toward a big business deal.
In Big they work at a toy company, collaborating after-hours on his idea for an electronic comic book. A scene in Working Girl
of the sweating couple crunching numbers late at night, as they work on Tess’ proposal, crackles like a Tennessee Williams scene.
In Dave, the head of a temp agency ends up as President — and channels his passion for job-finding into bigger things.
Sometimes impostors literally want to break out of their old lives, as in Roman Holiday,
where Audrey Hepburn is a princess pretending to be a commoner, while Gregory Peck’s character hides his shady-journalist self.
Others do it for survival: In Some Like It Hot,
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s musicians dress as women to avoid gangsters, but end up finding romantic matches. Cross-dressing impostor rom-coms date back to As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
Or sometimes the avatar embodies our aspirations in romance itself. A great example is Pillow Talk, in which Rock Hudson plays a rake posing as a polite Texan looking for love — and then, surprise, falls in love..
“Any time any of us is courting someone and we’re trying to win them over, we’re always impersonating — like everybody’s first date,” Billy Mernit, author of Writing the Romantic Comedy, says of these movies’ appeal. “We’re trying to impersonate our better selves.”
“All these stories hinge on a climax where the reveal is a threat to the relationship, but it’s not so horrible that it can’t be overcome,” Mernit says. “The person proves nonetheless they’re still worth loving and it’s okay.”
All these stories hinge on a climax where the reveal is a threat to the relationship.
Billy Mernit, author