Modern Romance

Opening well past the point favored by most romantic comedies, director/co-writer/star Albert Brooks' take on the genre begins with a breakup. After exchanging harsh words in a diner, Brooks and Kathryn Harrold go their separate ways. Brooks then spends the next few days attempting to forget his ...more

Challenging the notion that film eroticizes whatever's in its frame, Albert Brooks presents a vision of love as a cycle of torture, abnegation, delusion, and denial. Other than a probable heightening of tensions, Brooks and co-writer Monica Johnson offer no suggestion that events transpiring in Modern Romance differ significantly from its protagonists' past breakups and reunions. Seemingly motivated by the need to fill some cavernous void in himself, Brooks destructively obsesses on Harrold at ...more