1981: Modern Romance
Thursday, May 7, 2020 at 5:45PM Please welcome new contributor Nick Taylor who is providing us with extra Supporting Actress supplemental pleasure inbetween the Smackdown events...
Modern Romance (1981) begins with its main couple breaking up in a diner. Or rather, Robert Cole (actor/writer/director Albert Brooks) has decided to break up with his girlfriend Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold), because something in his life has felt off lately. He thinks it’s their relationship. She’s justifiably annoyed with this, particularly since they spend a lot of time breaking up and getting back together, and barely believes him when he says they’re not coming back from this. The only time Robert seems hesitant about ending it (this time) is when she says something that reignites his paranoia, making him think she won’t mind them splitting and is already having an affair. Mary leaves the building so quickly she doesn’t even have the chance to ask to get her order to go, then tells Robert to drop dead and gets in her car.
This scene lays out their relationship pretty concisely, though it’s not immediately obvious how Kathryn Harrold’s performance is responsible for its effectiveness. Modern Romance never feels clearer or more insightful than when Mary and Robert are together, in no small part because it has more to say about toxic relationships than it does about shitty men...
I wouldn't call Modern Romance the best showcase for any of Albert Brooks’ cinematic talents. I also wouldn't say Brooks is interested in pushing his persona in new directions, despite how much the part ostensibly highlights such an acidic aspect of it. Robert spends the remaining first half of the film oscillating between trying to move on from Mary and obsessively checking in on her, continuously attempting to do something new and going nowhere.
The film is listless without Mary, in a way one could consider reflective of the protagonist's perspective but never fully justifies how shapeless it feels until they’re a couple again. Similarly, it's good that Brooks recognizes what a desperate, unpleasant, manipulative guy Robert is, but nothing within his direction or performance comments on this behavior in any meaningful way in scenes where he's alone.
Brooks and the film work best when he has a scene partner to bounce off his comic energy while putting his nonsense into perspective. Bruno Kirby is good as Robert’s assistant editor, especially once the somewhat incongruous scenes of him at work start to put his behavior around Mary into sharper relief next to how competent and collaborative he is with his coworkers. Jane Hallaren also gets a nice, befuddled cameo as a woman he almost takes out to dinner. Still, Modern Romance is at its best when Robert and Mary are sorting through their mess of a relationship, to a degree that rests inordinately on Harrold’s performance. You can feel the film becoming focused whenever they’re together, now that Robert can scrutinize her in person rather than incessantly calling her at her work and driving around her house. The script practically demands Mary’s actress answer Robert’s endless questions, in a way that feels inextricable from deciding if Mary is a good person, if she’s better than him, and what she sees in this guy in the first place, all to a degree that Brooks and Robert aren’t burdened with.
Harrold's work notably doesn’t answer any of these questions. Rather than pointedly specifying her character in the face of so much discourse, Harrold’s acting is characterized by an ease with mood and a level of opacity that, to my mind, invaluably reconfigures Modern Romance. Mary’s reactions to Robert aren’t defined by whether she’s done a single thing he’s accused her of but rather in her sense of privacy and personal boundaries. She refuses to guide us through Robert’s actions as an audience surrogate, neither a broad stand-in for women writ large nor a moralistic barometer for how acceptable his actions are. Harrold asks you to take Mary at face value, yet her lack of complete emotional transparency is exactly the kind of behavior that would ignite a paranoid partner’s jealousy without inviting it upon herself in any way or making the character seem actively suspicious.
By making Mary as committed to this relationship as Robert is, she’s able to put his own behavior into focus instead of meeting the film’s terms about whether she’s compatible with him. Suddenly the focus of Modern Romance isn’t on her alone but on them, and if his anxieties and insecurities can even sustain a love life with someone willing to meet him halfway.
It’s not as if Harrold skimps on personality or becomes a cipher in order to achieve this degree of withholding. When things are going well, Mary and Robert appear to be genuinely happy together. Both actors eschew big displays of affection, conveying the openness and familiarity of a couple where the partners clearly care for each other despite their troubled history. She’s visibly delighted to snort coke at a party with some executives who bank with her - probably the giddiest we ever see her, as well as a rare incident where Robert doesn’t accuse her of infidelity the moment they’re alone afterwards. But he does interrupt her during a work dinner she had to attend last-minute over a date with him, pulling her aside and asking her to leave and come home with him. The actress's anger in the scene is a strikingly candid dismissal of Robert’s misogynist paranoia, made unexpectedly funny as the two of them try and fail to maintain restaurant decorum while bickering about their relationship.
You couldn’t say Harrold gets the kind of comedic, character-building opportunities that, say, Julie Hagerty does in Lost in America, which has the good sense to make her a co-lead. Harrold may not have the screen time or the material from Brooks’ to construct an all-timer performance, but through the priorities embedded in her characterization she’s able to fully connect with his approach to the material while elevating the whole enterprise. Modern Romance ends with Mary having to decide her future with Robert. It’s not immediately clear whether she’ll stay or leave, and the fact that either choice would make equal sense given the little we know about her is a stark, impressive culmination of Harrold’s appealingly implacable playing. (If you’re not sure she made the right choice, the closing credits certainly show what a long road they still have ahead of them). Who knows where Mary's decision-making will lead her, but thankfully, Kathryn Harrold knows exactly what she’s doing.
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks for this write-up! I think I'm in the minority in actually preferring Modern Romance to Lost in America, but I agree that Julie Hagerty gets more to do in her film.