Can Men and Women Be Friends? - A Film Study

At first glance, the age old question, "Can men and women be friends?" seems incredibly reductive. In a modern context, it places the burden on women to be "one of the guys" in order to earn respect and be seen as equals, rather than as romantic or sexual companions, or worse, objects of desire.

Examples of this issue are played out in Working Girl (1988 - Stream on HBOGo), where romantic and professional relationships are juxtaposed as opposing directions where women are expected to relinquish femininity in order to be taken seriously.

I'm going to choose, for a moment, to view the question as a sincere thought experiment regarding the different aspects of romantic and friendship "love," and use film to understand evolving relationships between heterosexual men and women in American society.

Canadian Psychologist John Lee used Greek and Latin words for Love as well as Color Theory to describe what he believed to be the 6 types of love.

Eros, being the physical desire of another being, and Storge, being the non-physical familial or friendship love, are the two components that make up the perfect, unconditional Agape love.

The question "Can men and women be friends" is a careful consideration of the following idea:

Is it possible for a straight man and a straight woman to ignore any possibility of Eros, compartmentalizing all of their love for one another into a non-sexual Storge love?

The foundation of modern Romantic Comedy hinges on the conceit: Two people are meant to be together, but one thing is getting in the way. This "obstacle" generally falls into one of 4 categories.

1. They don't like each other (The Proposal, 10 Things I Hate About You, You've Got Mail)
2. One of them is not available because they are in a relationship or for a mistaken identity reason (13 Going on 30, Notting Hill, Moonstruck, Never Been Kissed, She's the Man)
3. Family gets in the way (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet the Fockers)
4. They only see each other as friends

The fourth and final reason is the one I'm going to focus on as a sub-genre of the romantic comedy. 

When Harry Met Sally - 1980s / 1990s RomComs

The precursor for this issue in the modern form of the genre is the Nora Ephron-penned "When Harry Met Sally" (1989 - Stream with ShowTime) which pretty much gets directly into this issue within the first act.

In it, Billy Crystal's character argues that men are the reason for this flaw in gender dynamics. Straight men are incapable of not wanting to have sex with a woman. 

In other words, in non-familial relationships, Eros is a given, not a condition. This means, because Storge and Eros are mutually exclusive in all instances except romantic relationships, that men and women could never have an exclusively "friend" love.

And this is a much-argued point of debate, especially given today's political climate. I want to carefully place "business relationships" in a separate box for the purpose of this study, and focus primarily on social relationships between men and women in different romcoms.

In the case of Nora Ephron, she does technically prove Billy Crystal's character to be correct. The two main characters "end up" together, after decades of on-again off-again friendship. What I believe the conclusion to be, however, is that agape is less about friends admitting that their friendship has an element of physical desire, and more about timing.

13 Going on 30 - 2000s RomComs

A staple in pre-2010s romcom is "the boy who is a friend but is pining for the girl who only sees him as a friend."

I believe the modern understanding of the "friendzone" is a result of this reductive and toxic thinking. Many men treat friendship love, or Storge, as a participation trophy for being kind to women, and feel wronged when it is not returned as romantic desire. The all time great example of this is Snape in Harry Potter.

13 Going on 30 is able to side-step this by having the beginning characters so young, so the love is seen as more of a harmless crush.

Matt's feelings for Jenna in the beginning are an unrequited love. While her actions to reject him (throwing the miniature house at him) create a small bit of contempt in him for her, Mark Ruffalo's character never carries a chip on his shoulder about being friendzoned or rejected by the woman he sought after. When the timing is right, Jenna realizes she is in love with him as well. But it's her younger self in love with the younger him, able to open her friendship up to an (albeit innocent) form of romantic love.

Similarly to When Harry Met Sally, if released today, this story would probably get praise from a more sinister "men's rights" type for its portrayal of a man getting the girl through sheer kindness and patience. What that would erase, however, is Matt's genuine friendship with Jenna, the gift of the house being a summation of all of her superficial and childish desires for a perfect, suburban life. When she meets the man Matt becomes, she can reconcile the childhood romantic fancies with a more sustained, mature love.

This is proof that romantic comedies are a powerful lens for gender dynamics, and for influencing our understanding of love and romance.

"Always Be My Maybe" and "Anna and the Apocalypse" - 2010s

There are a series of films working to dismantle the "friendzone" stereotype, as we have now come to understand how harmful that thinking has been. Not only does it put women in a situation of being wary of being nice to men, it creates negative thinking in men about "deserving" true love simply for maintaining the base qualifications of friendship.

In Always Be My Maybe (2019 - Netflix) , the two "friend" characters are actually exes. While their friendship is rekindled more than a decade after their relationship, Marcus is unavailable because of a current relationship.

These are echos of When Harry Met Sally's ideology. Men and women are given space to form friendships when one of them is unavailable for a romantic relationship.

Although the foundations are laid for a true friendship, Sasha feels uneasy about crossing the line into something romantic because she doesn't see sacrifice from Marcus to make the relationship work outside of his comfort zone of San Francisco.

When push comes to shove, Marcus gives a little and the space is made for a romantic and friend-based relationship.

A different, probably non-romantic comedy film that addresses romantic affection between two friends is the near-perfect Anna and the Apocalypse (2017 - Stream on Hulu). What I love so much about this film is that the friends don't end up together. A boy has a crush on his female friend, he finds the feelings not to be reciprocated, and he still respects and cares about her enough to back off.

The film really shows a Gen Z that has evolved beyond the toxic thinking of our romcoms past. Men and women are not robots, they can't silo their feelings into boxes. But when you care about someone, you understand that what they feel is valid and respect that love is amorphous, capable of moving between types as we evolve and see each other in different contexts.

In Dating App Mishap, Lucy and Adam are definitively in a friendship at the start. The introduction of the photo, while tantalizing in the moment, is just a spark. Their storge, or friendship love, is already a healthy fire.

Never in the story does Adam pressure her to see him as the obvious choice, he respects her too much to threaten any conceptions of the validity of their friendship.

But as the door has been kicked open for a sexual desire, things are forced to change. Lucy must reexamine her understanding of their friendship, and only when she is ready to admit that the crossover from friendship to true romantic love is a carefully constructed bridge (because of the foundation of friendship/storge) and not a leap of faith, only then is she ready to take that step.

The English Patient (1996) - Anthony Minghella

Continuing to make my way through the 1990s Best Picture Winners (has anyone ever heard of Unforgiven?…. NOOO it’s a Western!!), I thought I would see this one while it’s still on Netflix.

The English Patient is simultaneously a love story set in the vast, unexplored continent of Africa during the years before World War II and a story of loss in the Italian countryside in 1944 up until the end of the war.

And yes I do use those descriptors of Africa ironically.

The movie opens on a plane being shot down in the desert, where one survivor is horribly burned but alive. Then, we are in Italy, where a Canadian nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche), after experiencing the death of two loved ones, decides to stay behind and take care of a man who is disfigured from burns and does not remember his name. They settle in a bombed monastery in the countryside.

This is only gif of Juliette Binoche I could find from this movie! That’s her meeting David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), who was a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative (thank you Wikipedia).

Meanwhile! Back in Africa in the late 1930s, the Royal Geographic Society is tasked with mapping out parts of Libya. There’s Geoffrey and Katherine Clifton, played by Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas. And there’s Count László de Almásy, played by Ralph Fiennes. The Count and Katherine soon have an affair.

Drama! I wasn’t expecting the “I’m a socially awkward and actually pretty rude white man, but you’re going to fall in love with me anyway,” but surprise! It’s here. They pretty much hate each other the first moment they meet. The Count is self-righteous, pretentious, and annoying.

Meanwhile, Hana is taking care of this man who is slowly remembering his life before his accident, with the help of Caravaggio’s suspicions that he is a traitor and a spy. Also we meet Hana’s love interest, Kip (Naveen Andrews), a bomb diffuser!

Besides the 2 hour and 42 minute run time, I think that I liked The English Patient. It definitely didn’t have an impact on me, but it wasn’t intolerable to watch, like it was for some people in the 90s.

I cared way more about whatever Juliette Binoche was doing than about the stuff going on in the desert, which I guess is why she won an Oscar and Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas lost.

The English Patient did go on to win 9 of its 12 Oscar nominations though, including Best Picture, which is insane, and also the same number of Oscar wins as Gone with the Wind, a movie that is 1 hour and 26 minutes longer than this one!

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - Stanley Kubrick

“A bored couple’s confessions open up a world of sexual obsession and debauchery. Be careful what you wish for.”Netflix. What? How did you make this movie sound like a Vince Vaughn movie and a DCOM at the same time…

I’ve seen 6 of Stanley Kubrick’s films. 2001 Space Odyssey was the first. The Shining is my favorite. A Clockwork Orange is the one I understand the least. Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket are in the middle somewhere. This one I would rank on the more accessible side… that is if I even understood what it was about.

Pretty much my only knowledge of Eyes Wide Shut was that it was crazy rich people being crazy, at least that was the understanding I got from a short Happy Endings reference in Season 3 Episode 23.

Nailed it. In the film, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is married to Alice, played by Cruise’s real life second wife, Nicole Kidman.

The first night of the film, the couple goes to a fancy Christmas party for fancy people, and both are tempted to be unfaithful. The second night, they smoke weed together and go into some deep talk about their relationship. Bill puts his foot in his mouth like 40 times, mansplaining the world to her.

In what I took as an act of revenge for oversimplifying female sexuality as well as putting her on a pedestal, Alice reveals a dark secret about their past.

Her story is the catalyst for Bill to go on a crazy adventure. There seems to be some mix of “I love my wife how could she do this to me” and “I’m gonna show her” at play. The whole movie is asking the viewer to question dualities in love and sex, as Alice makes very clear that she can have strong feelings of love for Bill as well as a carnal desire to cheat in the same moment. The long, slow scenes give some great drama to the weird crazy spiral of Bill’s night.

I don’t want to give away the fun details, but Bill’s desperation for some new experience, or some way to get revenge on his wife, leads him to a place he never could have dreamed existed.

I feel like I must be a little desensitized to batshit crazy sex scenes, but I definitely nodded along with this part in a “yeah this is exactly what I assume rich people are doing with their time” sort of way.

Bill gets in big trouble for not belonging to the society of sex-crazed 1 percenters. But his curiosity about the party does not go away, which gets him into even more trouble.

Look out for flamboyant Alan Cumming hotel concierge.

I think what’s really interesting is that while the focus of the movie is the weird, mysterious party, it is essentially a story about Bill and Alice’s relationship and what drives them to either distance themselves or come closer together. A confession by Alice triggers this rift, and Bill has to go searching for some kind of understanding of how to face the future of their relationship. I took it as his erotic adventures are sort of his journey towards forgiving his wife, but obviously it’s also a lot more complex than that. The Christmas setting also works to add an off-putting tone to the film, things are happy and jolly but they are also foreboding. There are a lot of references to rainbows as well, and the pull to finding what is at the “end of the rainbow.”

The film was censored in the United States (as it is on my self-proclaimed family friendly blog), and led to a sort of disappointing box office run. With a successful international reception, however, it is Kubrick’s highest grossing film, at $162 million.

Kubrick passed away four days after showing the final cut to Warner Bros, and there has been some controversy as to whether he was proud of the film or not, with most parties, including his daughter, stating that he was very happy with the finished product. Also some people believe the film is based on true events and those elite people depicted in the film offed him… dun dun dun.

It feels different than Kubrick’s other films, but I believe it has that same calculated cinematography, intricate symbolism, and suspenseful pacing that remind us what a great filmmaker Kubrick has always been.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Ang Lee

From the director of Life of Pi comes one of the highest grossing films with LGBT protagonists of all time… How to Get Oscar Noms by Two Straight Guys!

Kidding aside, I fell ridiculously in love with this movie. Now I’ll discuss why it’s problematic.

I’m joking! *clears throat* In Wyoming in 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are hired to herd sheep for the summer. Jack’s job is to guard the sheep all night from coyotes in their remote sleeping area in the mountains, and Ennis’ job is to… take care of base camp? A bottle of booze later, their loneliness gets the better of them and after two seconds of cuddling they’re in crazy frantic love-making mode.

I knew they were gonna have sex the second Jack tried to help clean Ennis’ wound from falling of his horse. Nothing is more intimate than cleaning a wound!!

But sadly the summer of cuddling in denim ends, and Ennis marries Heath’s wife IRL the white Michelle Williams, Alma. They have two daughters together. Jack tries to come back the next summer, but the homophobic rancher knew about their little secret and refuses to hire him. So he moves to Texas and marries his Love and Other Drugs (2010) costar Anne Hathaway!

When Jack and Ennis reunite after four years, the chemistry is electric!

Don’t see how two closeted men in the 1960s would make out outside, but it’s cute.

They begin to have seasonal trips up to Brokeback Mountain for “fishing.” Alma knows better, and over the years her marriage to Ennis deteriorates, ending in divorce.

During one trip, Jack suggests they get a cute little ranch together and live happily ever after and it’s the actual cutest thing. But Ennis has some weird childhood memory of his town brutally murdering a gay man and he refuses. Stupid Wyoming.

The film is seeped in toxic masculinity and explores how it negatively impacts their relationship. Poor Jack just wants to be with Ennis forever and ever.

He’s the sensitive one. Ennis is more of a… wear denim and punch guys on the Fourth of July kind of guy.

And so they fight and fight over the course of a 20 year relationship.

Jack is so sensitive even with his creepy mustache.

I knew the movie had great performances by the main four actors, Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway, but what I didn’t know is the great tertiary characters that fill Brokeback Mountain’s awesome cast.

Kate Mara (House of Cards, The Martian) plays Ennis’ grown up daughter.

Linda Cardellini (Scooby Doo, Freaks and Geeks) plays Ennis’ girlfriend for a short period of time after his marriage.

Anna Faris (everything great) plays a random girl who is a friend of Jack’s wife. A gif of her in the movie doesn’t exist so here she is playing basketball in her underwear with Chris Evans.

Brokeback Mountain is a hugely successful mainstream film with a love story between two men. It won Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Critics’ Choice Awards, Producers Guild Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards. It lost Best Picture at the Academy Awards to Crash.

So much of the LGBT film we have today is in part due to Brokeback Mountain’s success. Despite it’s limiting view of same sex love, how it is shameful and private and ultimately doomed, it remains a true accomplishment of cinema for its time.

Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) - Abdellatif Kechiche

I’m sorry for not calling it La Vie d’Adèle, I went through my blog and I’ve only ever used the English titles for films so I need that consistency in my life.

A French coming of age film about two women who fall in love… that unanimously won the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival… how has it taken me this long to see it?

Um… I’ll tell you why, it’s 2 hours and 59 minutes.

Yeah… my reaction exactly.

But you can’t pass up a film that contains scenes which Variety calls, “the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.”

Blue Is the Warmest Color is a massive undertaking that charts the long and passionate relationship between its two main characters, Adèle and Emma. When the film begins, Adèle is a closeted 15-year-old high school student and Emma is an openly gay art student. They have a love at first sight moment!

Across years of intense sex, heated fights, and professional success, the film vividly explores the realities of falling in love while coming of age. Based on the graphic novel, Le bleu est une couleur chaude, by Julie Maroh, the relationship in the film is probably more toned down than the destructive and even fatal love of the graphic novel. But its scope and closeness to its characters is supremely impressive.

Watching Adèle come to understand her sexuality in a seemingly conservative high school is powerful, as she tries failingly to hide this information from her classmates.

After a failed relationship with a male classmate, Adèle is kissed by a girl in her class who then rejects Adèle’s romantic advances. It’s sad and quick, but inside Adèle a spark is ignited. She decides to go to a gay club one night, where she sees the blue haired girl, Emma, once again.

They become friends, and love soon follows. They discuss art and philosophy, Adèle expressing her passion for reading while Emma wants to become a painter.

Crazy, Olympian-type sex comes next. Despite all the warnings, I was not ready for the intensity or duration of the sex scenes. Many critics (as well as trusted friends of mine) hinted at the “male gaze” aspect of the sex scenes, which are elaborately choreographed and include close-up shots I’d never though I’d see in my lifetime. There’s definitely an element of male fantasy that many viewers picked up on.

The duration may be a little bit more realistic than the average 1 or 2 minute sex scene we’re used to, but I’m not sure if that means it is justified in a 179 minute film. But maybe the goal was to purposefully discomfort me with the intensity, knowing how destructive and heartbreaking this level of passion would end up being for them? I just don’t know if I trust any lesbian sex scene written, filmed, and edited by straight men.

As years go by, Adèle and Emma move in together and live a happy life as a couple. But Emma’s success as a painter distances the two, with Adèle working as a teacher and regularly being questioned about whether she is “fulfilled.” The theme of social class is important in the film, as Emma comes from an upper middle class background where her parents welcome Adèle as Emma’s girlfriend, discussing art and culture and even making a point to question her decision to become a teacher.

The scene with Adèle’s middle class parents is markedly different, where Adèle’s father points out that Emma should have a more stable career than a painter, and both of them believing Emma is just Adèle’s philosophy tutor rather than her serious girlfriend.

Food is an important motif as well, pasta being Adèle’s food of choice until one scene where Emma teaches her how to eat oysters. Kechiche notes that these are both indicative of class as well as suggestive sexual metaphors.

Obviously blue plays an important role in the film, symbolizing both Adèle’s curiosity for something different as well as the sadness of the outcome. Picasso, the second most famous artist to have a Blue Period (Lilo Pelekai), is regularly referenced.

But despite the run time, despite the crazy sex, I found Blue Is the Warmest Color to be a beautiful film about love, heartbreak, and growth. From the minutiae of daily life of two women in love to the chaos of having it all come crashing down, everything is presented seemingly without pretext, giving the audience a chance to form their own opinions. I personally loved the ambiguity of the ending, as almost a mirror for the ambiguity of our own futures. We can’t predict where Adèle will go from here because not even she knows.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) - Ron Howard

I feel like this movie belongs in a box set with The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.

Russell Crowe stars in this Best Picture winning movie about the American Nobel laureate and mathematician John Nash. He’s no Gladiator, but he’s nice enough.

The best part about the movie is that they think they can casually age Russell Crowe from 20 years old to 66 in a two hour movie.

Not to mention his Noah costar and on-screen wife, Jennifer Connelly! And if you’re wondering why this is included in a Wikipedia article called “List of films featuring whitewashed roles,” Alicia Nash is El Salvadorian. Noah is in this list too, obviously.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, who in 1948 began his doctorate program at Princeton, where he received the John S. Kennedy fellowship. Determined to discover something wholly original, Nash skips all his classes.

But he ends up writing a paper on equilibrium that wins him the respect of his colleagues and the commendation of his superiors.

Also his fun and crazy roommate, Charles.

Soon, Nash begins a career as a mathematician, where he sometimes helps the government with covert operations to crack codes from the Soviet Union.

And he meets his wife! He wins her over despite being incredibly socially awkward.

But as the movie reminds us, Nash is one of the best pattern recognition experts in the world.

He woos her with this party trick where he can find any shape he wants amongst the stars. I looked up at the stars that night and counted three… so… triangle.

But just when you think this rich, straight, white man has it all, the movie reveals a twist! And even though they were on the verge of losing me because almost everything in the first hour goes exactly as Nash plans, I found it to be really heartbreaking.

I won’t give it away, but the rest of the movie finds Nash desperately trying to hold on to that passion for numbers and discovery that made him endearing in the early part of the film. Disgraced, he tries to return to Princeton, and eventually finds a loving community amongst the 80s and 90s students (the 70s ones were so mean to him). And then he wins a Nobel Prize!

The movie is ultimately a story about love, how important it is and what it can do to transform people who are lost. A Beautiful Mind tackles mental illness in a way that is sort of refreshing for its time.

Plus the movie is incredibly prominent in our pop culture consciousness. Whenever you see a room filled with papers covering every surface with an attempt to reach a singular conclusion, that’s A Beautiful Mind reference.

A Beautiful Mind went on to win 4 Oscars, including a whopping two for Ron Howard… who directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas the year before.