Couple Films: Rediscovering Love During Conjugal Hero Quest

Date Night: A couple with a problem.

Two horrors and a comedy from the past decade teach us the same lesson: bored couples need an adventure to find their lost special something.

Films like Open Water, Vacancy, and Date Night may not have marriage problems as the main conflict, but star couples in problematic marriages. As the films progress, their protagonists get mixed up in live-threatening plots. In order to survive, they cooperate and eventually resolve their marriage crisis.

 

Case Studies

In 2010 comedy Date Night, worn out by marriage and parenthood, a couple decides to have a special night out. When they take somebody else’s reservation in a VIP restaurant, the mob mistakes them for the thieves of an important flash drive.

In 2007 horror Vacancy, after their car breaks down in a country road, a couple checks in a stinking motel. Once settled, they discover that they are captives of a snuff movie circuit.

In 2003 horror Open Water, a couple on a snorkeling holiday gets left behind and drifts into shark-infested waters.

 

Elements in Common

Each of the three films begins showing a couple in crisis. No matter what the main plot is, the question is the same: Can they find love again? How will their romantic subplot be resolved?

Open Water: busy couple leaving for holidays; they are about to reconsider what is important in life...

Open Water: laptop in bed.

Then, something happens, that puts their lives in danger. Sharks, snuff-filmmakers, or the mob turn their marriage problems into secondary priority.

No matter what the main plot is, the question is the same: Can they find love again?

At the end of the film, the couple realises that they still love each other. The resolution of the romantic subplot brings forth the films’ common theme: Those tired of the conjugal life’s banality, by going through the adventure, learn to appreciate what they have always had.

 

Scenes in Common

The couples go through the same inner journey, from crisis to reunion. The three films feature common scenes as essential turning points of their love stories.

Date Night: mouth guard against intimacy.

First, there is always a scene of sexual dysfunction in the story’s setup. It appears that sex life is the first thing that suffers in a flawed relationship. In Date Night, he asks her to "fool around" in bed, but when she clumsily removes her mouth guard, he loses his appetite. In Open Water and Vacancy, it is the wife who is not in the mood.

Open Water: the wife's refusal of the call. The nudity that comes before this scene will be one of the examples analysed in future post "On Nudity," on this blog. Behold!

A major quarrel is also crucial, during which they bring forth untold things and blame each other for their misfortune. In Vacancy, they quarrel throughout the whole first act, while in Date Night, the quarrel breaks out at the film's midpoint.

Very often, a temporary separation makes them realise how much they need each other. In Open Water, they panic as they wake up to find that they have drifted apart. The moment of separation, however short, can also make them rediscover each other’s hidden virtues. In Date Night, when she comes out of a dressing room disguised as a stripper, he remembers how sexy she can be.

Date NIght: The wife as the husband's fantasy.

Finally, moments of forgiveness drive their inner journey towards resolution. In Date Night, right after their big quarrel, they decide that they want to stay together. It is the first promise that they will make the relationship work. In Open Water, shortly after a huge argument, they say they love each other and share some candy found in her diving suit pocket. We can’t know for sure that they have learnt their lesson, but we can assume that this is the moment that they feel the closest to each other.

"And they lived happily ever after" is not necessary for their love story to be resolved positively. At their last moments, they come as close to each other as ever.

 

The Heroine's Journey

The two horror films share another common point. Both of them start with the husband being stronger and more positive than his wife. He pep talks and plans their survival, while she fears and resists. (She is also the one who turns down the sex proposal.) As the film progresses, though, the wife outgrows her husband and drives the story to the end. Therefore, it is the wife who has the bigger character’s arc. When the husband-mentor fails, she gathers the strength, transforms into a heroine, and finishes the adventure.

Vacancy: the wife takes over as the film's Act III unfolds.

Date Night, on the other hand, has a more balanced approach to its heroes. Not only their weaknesses are comparable, but also their hidden skills surprise each other all the time. Nevertheless, the wife’s journey is still stated as more difficult: "Everything you're doing, I'm doing in heels!" she shouts at him as they climb up a fire escape.

 

The Couple’s Adventure

Almost losing something in order to appreciate it may sound like a banal theme. The protagonists learn their lesson, and the film ends before the audience finds out the endurance of the lesson learnt.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Can any villain be truly more devastating than the mundanity of habit, in a long-term relationship?

One may ask, what happens to couples who only have their persistence and patience to continue through every day’s mundanity, without sharks, without killers, without adventures to rock the boat? This may well be the most difficult adventure, asking for real every-day heroes.

 

Chinatown Plot Diagram

The following spaghetti incident is the result of me figuring out what actually happens in Chinatown -including all evidences' plants and payoffs.

Its basic structure resembles Blake Snyder's Board (first row is Act One, second and third are Act Two, and fourth is Act Three), while sequences are marked with letters A, B, etc., according to Frank Daniel's teachings.

In the yellow box, there is an index with the colour coding, in regard to the several characters and their subplots.

Enjoy!

(Diagram created with Grafio app.)

Movie Plots: Doing the Twist

The Usual Suspects' twist at the end: a delight or an insult to the audience?

In a film’s plot, a twist is the revelation of new information, which surprises the audience and makes them reconsider what they know about the story so far. If carefully prepared and executed, a twist can be a moment of great delight.

Plot Twist Placement

One common misunderstanding is that a twist only happens at the very end of a film. In fact, twists appear anywhere in a story.

Both sister and daughter? That's too twisted, even for Jake Gittes.

When Faye Dunaway shouts “She's my sister and my daughter,” several scenes before Chinatown’s finale, she causes a major twist, which becomes the catalyst for the story’s resolution.

Bill Murray’s realisation that he lives the same day for a second time is the film's inciting incident; a twist that happens not far from the beginning of Groundhog Day, setting the story’s major conflict and giving him the whole film to resolve it.

Friday the 13th franchise: Jason keeps coming back to life; a twist that everyone expects.

Supernatural slasher films, like of the series Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, start and finish with the dead killer coming back to life, to continue his murder spree. This is a twist of which the purpose is not to surprise, but to fulfill the audience’s expectations for these films’ genre conventions.

It is obvious that, depending on their placement, twists have different functions in story structure. Nevertheless, the twist at the end is the one with the biggest effect, determining the audience's utter satisfaction or disappointment.

Problems With the Twist at the End

Problematic twists usually appear near the end of films, because it is the most difficult part for the screenwriter to pull off. A twist near the beginning, however absurd, can still be promising and lead to a strong story, as long as the issues that it brings are resolved later. Such, for example, is the case of Groundhog Day.

As a story progresses towards the end, though, the audience knows the characters inside out and expects a satisfying resolution, according to what has happened so far. Anything else feels artificial or random.

Examples of Problematic Twists at the End

The policeman is as amazed -and as fooled- as the audience.

Although many may argue with this opinion, the end of The Usual Suspects is an example of a very problematic twist. However impressive it may be, it comes from nowhere, without any setup that could justify it as meaningful. Moreover, it expresses a hubristic stance that the screenwriter is superior to the audience he has amazed, because he can exploit their suspension of disbelief. He creates and cancels plot as he likes, taking the audience for a ride just as his devilish villain Keyser Söze swindles the policeman. Not only is the twist unsatisfactory, but it also pushes the boundaries of storytelling morals, as the writer gains the impressions, but loses our trust.

How can you be saved, after you have danced with the devil? By introducing an "It was all a dream" twist.

In The Devil’s Advocate, the final twist shows that the whole film has been only a flash-forward and the protagonist has a second chance to make the right decisions. A problematic resolution that causes the audience's empathy for the protagonist to disappear. We, real people, seldom have second chances in life and, unless one is a psychic, even less common are flash-forwards. If the ending of The Devil's Advocate left you a bit dissatisfied, maybe this is the reason.

In Wild Things, there is a series of final twists that form a sequence of false endings. The result is that the story has no real conclusion -and who cares?- as the false endings undermine the power of the real one. The audience’s empathy for the characters and concern for the outcome is gone. (False endings are explicitly ridiculed in Robert Moore's 1976 comedy Murder by Death.)

The Sixth Sense’s Success

The Sixth Sense has a frequently discussed and utterly satisfying twist, the success of which lies on the following elements:

• Its setup and payoff process is a masterpiece, executed without leaving the audience feeling cheated. If we watch the film for a second time, we are satisfied to see that the screenwriter pulls off such a storytelling stunt in an honest and respectful to the audience way.
• It is meaningful: it finally explains Bruce Willis's ruined marriage - he has lost his wife because he is, actually, dead.
• It is ironic: a little boy who can see the dead learns to accept his powers with the help of a dead man.
• Although the twist is meaningful, the story doesn’t rely on it to have meaning. The story's main tension is resolved before the twist: dead or not, Willis helps the kid accept his supernatural powers.

A Twist Steals the Show

A successful twist can offer great delight to the movie-goers. There is, however, the question of whether a good story is helped by an overwhelming twist. It is very likely that The Sixth Sense’s masterpiece twist helped the film’s box office numbers; several people may have watched this $40m-budget film at least twice, contributing to the film's worldwide gross of almost $673m. It may be a little unfair, though, that most people hardly remember anything other than the final twist at the end of a very touching story.