TRENDING Romance revival
ONCE DISMISSED AS FLUFF AND FRIVOLITY, LOVE IS BACK WITH A TENDER VENGEANCE
At a time when intimacy has been in short supply, are we falling back in love with a neglected genre? Romances of all kinds, from swooning dramas to the romcoms of the 1990s and 2000s were once box-office bankers, but stale formulas and the more reliable profitability of action movies saw them languish in recent years. But now: they’re back. First, Netflix, with its unrivalled spending power, bet on originals like To All The Boys, The Perfect Date and, of course, Bridgerton. These smash hits proved that romance wasn’t dead, it just needed an update. In cinema, the slow-burn trend – exemplified by offerings as varied as Call Me By Your Name in 2017 and Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 – showed that there was life in the genre, as long as the stories were fresh. And now it’s come to fruition with romance firmly back in our hearts, though often of an unexpected kind. In film releases this month, female love takes centre stage, with frontier romance The World To Come (out now) seeing Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston find solace from their unhappy marriages with each
“Romance ISN’T DEAD. It just needed A RESET”
other. In Ammonite (out now), Kate Winslet stars as palaeontologist Mary Anning, who falls in love with her friend (Saoirse Ronan). On TV, BBC One’s The Pursuit of Love (out this spring) is the joyful romp we need: the adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s classic follows the romantic adventures of aristocrat Linda Radlett (Lily James) and her cousin Fanny Logan (Emily Beecham), as they gallivant around Europe between the World Wars. In books, rejoice over Dial A For Aunties (out 29 April), Jesse Q Sutanto’s part-murder mystery, part-romcom, in which Meddelin Chan kills her blind date by accident. Queer love is celebrated in Laura Kay’s The Split (out now) and The Hate U Give’s Angie Thomas is one of six authors writing about Black teen love in Blackout (out 21 June).