As Gene Rhee puts it, “Relationships are something everyone can relate to—straight or gay, man or woman. What is life without relationships?”
The Trouble With Romance, Rhee’s debut feature film that was released last Friday at Quad Cinemas Theaters, attempts to answer this question.
Picture this: you, the viewer, are in a hotel somewhere in America watching four different couples deal with very personal, somewhat uncomfortable romantic issues, including heart-to-hearts with hookers, spouses tied to beds with neckties, and hallucinating ex-boyfriends.
None of the couples is related, but rather isolated in its own embarrassing vignette. There is no overarching direction to the narrative.
The concluding message of the film? In Rhee’s words: “Relationships can be painful, but in the end love is still worth it.”
The message I got? People do kinky things in hotels.
The trouble with The Trouble With Romance is that it lacks a cohesive storyline. It wouldn’t have been difficult to construct a simple plot to unite the stories. As it is, the film flounders in the “theme” of troubled romance. Its title, The Trouble With Romance, reflects its vagueness and uncertainty.
The tone of the film is also confused. It is part potty humor, part soap opera—there are poop jokes and profound conversations with prostitutes. The potty humor is well-played by Roger Fan as Jimmy, a quirky pothead reminiscent of John Cho in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, in a scene that involves defecating on a picture of an ex-girlfriend, and an overflowing toilet.
But the film concludes like a soap opera, with a melodramatic conversation between a handsome guy who claims to have avoided sex since breaking up with his college girlfriend and a prostitute who looks more like a babysitter than a whore.
The cheesy aesthetic of the film is largely due to the claustrophobic interior of the hotel, the absence of any exterior scenes, and the artificial lighting. To his credit, Rhee made the most of what he had—due to monetary constraints, the film was shot entirely on a Hollywood lot. Still, a film that doesn’t include any daylight scenes risks feeling artificial.
Rhee’s first film, The Quest For Length, was an official selection at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It seems as if he was still on “the quest for length” when he made The Trouble With Romance—only he did it by stringing together four potentially amusing shorts into a feature-length film.
“I don’t know anyone who hasn’t experienced some pain in their romantic life,” Rhee said. True. But painful relationships don’t make a movie—a plotline with compelling characters does.
The Trouble With Romance is currently playing at the Quad Cinemas in New York (34 West 13th St., between 5th and 6th Avenues). Tickets are $11.
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