Valentine’s season has a way of emphasizing the nice, sweet parts of romantic relationships and glosses over the dirty, sloppy bits. Maybe that’s part of the point, to take a break from how lonely and alienated most people feel and just revel in the possibility that someone could actually know us and still like us despite this fact. I suppose it’s worthwhile to have a day to acknowledge this. And there are plenty of movies that highlight the mushy feelings that come with love and romance, and good on them for expressing those feelings. But since there is no day or movie season specifically designed to celebrate the awkwardness that accompanies most romantic encounters, and since it’s an unavoidable part of the experience of sex and romance that gets ignored during a season purporting to highlight this aspect of our lives, it seems like as good a time as any to offer an appreciation of the movies that depict how awkward and uncomfortable love can be at times. Specifically, during the most intimate of times.
How Woody Allen has managed to translate his nervous energy into sexuality is a mystery to me, but in his movies at least it translates purely into comedy, especially in scenes involving sex. While women being absent during sex has become a bit of a movie cliché, Allen and Diane Keaton put a slightly new spin on it, having Keaton so removed from their intimacy that she is shown leaving her body to smoke a joint in the middle of everything.
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