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partner because she has the attributes he most desires. The obstacle to
their union is his best friend, Julianne (Julia Roberts) – introduced as a
self-possessed unconventional woman with a good career, yet also what
appears to be some commitment issues that have led to her remaining
resolutely single. That is, until the engagement is announced and she
becomes obsessed with claiming the groom for herself. Julie, we realise,
from the way she dresses to the cigarettes she smokes and her increas-
ingly ruthless conduct, lacks the ‘feminine’ charms that Michael finds
so attractive about Kimmie. Formerly involved, yet breaking up largely
due to her undemonstrative nature (she reveals early on that she has
only cried a handful of times in her life, including her parents’ deaths,
and has problems with public displays of affection), the fact that Julie
wants him back seems more attributable to a sense of entitlement than
love. Prepared to resort to the most underhand tactics, she pretends to
be close to Kimmie so that she can use any confidences as ammunition
against her. Objecting to her decision to give up her career for Michael,
for example, is not staked through any sense of female solidarity, just
an attempt to drive a wedge between the couple, and we see her shock-
ing duplicity again and again. However, Julie is forced to pay for her
actions. As her former confidence and composure crumble, resorting
to ever more desperate measures, we realise she is another example
of a humbled heroine – and one who doesn’t even get her man in
the end. The irony is that the more she humiliates herself – reneging
any sense of self-respect at a pre-wedding party when she shamelessly
implores the groom ‘choose me’ and manically runs after him, even as
he runs after Kimmie – the less these strategies work. Michael is simply
disappointed by her behaviour, unmoved by her ardour and eventu-
ally marries Kimmie as planned, leaving Julie to do the decent thing
by serving as Maid of Honour and crying into her champagne. The
emotion that Michael clearly wanted in a relationship – and ‘sweet
chocolate covered Kimmie’ cries at the drop of a hat – is something Julie
wasn’t able to offer until too late, providing another warning against
being too independent, single-minded and emotionally ‘withdrawn’.
Yet we might also consider it to be a fairly progressive end, particularly
given the demands made of the somewhat insipid yet eminently more
Finding Love and Fulfilling Dreams
43
‘marriageable’ Kimmie, leaving the far more interesting and unortho-
dox female single, yet far from necessarily defeated.
Like any other genre, rom-coms enjoy playing with conventions
(within accepted parameters) and a number do not necessarily proceed
as we might expect. Indie variations have tended to levy a sense of cyni-
cism about love and thus pitch themselves as anti-rom-coms. One of
the most unusual films to result from such experimentation is
Waitress
(Adrienne Shelley, 2007). Jenna (Keri Russell) is unhappily married to
the abusive Earl (Jeremy Sisto) and discovering she is pregnant seems
to affirm no way out of the marriage. She starts an affair with newly
arrived doctor Jim Pometter (Nathan Fillion) – both seeming to suc-
cumb to the magical effects of her ‘falling in love pie’ – yet her daughter
is, we realise, the true love story here, her birth immediately prompting
Jenna to ask her husband for a divorce, end her affair and start her life
again. She fulfils her dream of winning a pie-baking contest, uses her
prize money (and a handy cheque from her boss) to buy the diner she
works at, and the film ends on an idyllic note as mother and daughter,
in matching yellow outfits, walk happily down a path together into the
sunset. The narrative, needless to say, is unconventional. In contrast
to ditzy colleague Dawn (played by Shelley) who implicitly believes in
‘Prince Charming’ and marries an obsessive oddball after a whirlwind
romance, Jenna’s marriage to a controlling immature man has left her
with no expectations of happiness. Her interest in Dr Pometter is partly
motivated by his contrasting respectfulness towards her, yet also seems
more hormonal than emotional, and the relationships she values most
are with other women: the mother who taught her to bake, her work-
friends and ultimately her daughter. Becoming her own woman, earn-
ing recognition for her pies and having her dream come true does not
(directly) involve a man.
Effectively, Jenna’s life starts again with the birth of her daughter,
which galvanises her to make key changes. The transformation in her
attitude is all the more notable because of Jenna’s profound reluctance
to become a mother, adding a subversive feature in the resentment she
admits to throughout her pregnancy. This motif of rebirth through
motherhood shares traces with a tale often discussed as a precursor
of ‘Sleeping Beauty’, Basile’s ‘Sun, Moon and Talia’.
23
In this story a
woman is impregnated whilst asleep and subsequently gives birth to
twins, only reviving from her slumbers when their suckling dislodges
an enchanted thorn from her breast. Although the abuse element is
obviously unsavoury, the key point of the tale is that motherhood
revives this early Sleeping Beauty, not a prince. We might consider this
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