Overcoming the Romance Genre Marketing
At first, Anyone But You was first marketed and described as a light and fun enemies-to-lovers romcom, heavily relying on cliched movie markers and telling the audience to expect tropes like “banter, beachside antics, and sizzling chemistry.” However, many audience goers walked out realizing that the movie was battling with ideals that many romcoms oversaw to focus on emotional and relational structures like fear, vulnerability, and the safeguarding we impose to protect ourselves from heartbreak.
Before the movie indicating the plot began, the eye of social and cinematic hype was on the film, tracked and updated by social media users waiting for the film to become available. Numerous and well-crafted romcoms of the past were and still are romanticized and regarded with nostalgia. The hype was founded on the comedic performances of Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell and the two actors chemistry. Like the film, the stars and actors garnished romantic core plots with the social media hype to the film, also.
However, with the movie’s runtime, it was clear that the film was not only selling a romcom, it was untangling the core plot. Anyone But You was selling romance.Where Flirting Ends and Fear Begins
Among many themes, this film examines a simple, yet complex issue: people shy away from fulfilling relationships, not because they dislike someone, but because they fear emotional intimacy and all it entails. Bea and Ben are not simply strangers. They are people who dislike one another to the extreme because they fear the implications of a relationship. They both have relationship histories colored by complication and trauma, emotional relationships of the overthinking, micromanaging kind on her side, and the emotionally detached, sarcasm and irony hiding a layer of sincerity, masculine side on his side.
There is a clever, yet subtle representation of the nature of their connection. Their first interaction, a simple case of a single miscommunication, one measly assumption morphing into isolation, acted as a foreshadow. It represents how so many relationships in this day and age, the digitally fragmented and disconnected Assynaptic Era as I prefer to refer to it, shatter into a million pieces without ever having had the opportunity to build healthy connection. But rather than being a dismissive commentary on the issue, they used the physical separation of the characters as a metaphor for emotional separation. Every time they attempt to build connection, something forcibly separates them, as if the cosmos itself was embodying their characters and their diverging interior projections.
Even the characters’ geographical placements interacts with the viewers and provides representation on emotional distance. Looking over the Australian ocean with its multitude of geographical features and topographies, it is easy to see their fear of emotional intimacy and the emotional risk of diving into a new relationship and all the connections and complexities therein.A Pair of Characters Who Are More Than Romantic Tropes
Bea: A Woman Who Fears Her Own Heart
Even though Bea wants to make a real emotional investment in a relationship, and she wants to make real emotional investment in a relationship, her entire emotional journey consists of avoiding making significant emotional choices because of her desire to make a real emotional investment. She wants genuine emotional connections, but she avoids making emotional choices. She is terrified of genuine emotional commitment and real responsibility.
Sydney Sweeney close the arc by performing with the intimacy that Bea is supposed to fall in. She is grounded in her own real life journey. Sweeney has played emotionally layered characters, like in the series Euphoria and the movie Reality, and her performance of Priscilla is impacting the real life national discourse, and she has acknowledged that emotional on many occasions. Navigating emotional turmoil, professional malleability, and emotional expectations of the public audience. All of those elements bleed into Bea. You can see it in the small gestures: the quick eye movements, the subtle smirk showing half a smile, pretending a polished deflective closure, and the obviously high level of emotional turmoil.
Her performance is a real time commentary on the balance of independence with emotional longing, high levels of confidence with emotional fragility.
Ben: A Man Who Uses Charm as Armor
Ben is every bit the romantic comedy like, charming and handsome hero. Until he isn’t. Until he isn’t. He clearly has the charming and witty exterior that every hero should have, but he has emotional depth, and that is the negative emotional depth of avoiding genuine intimacy. He is emotionally misunderstood, and that is exactly the way he is defensive. He isn’t emotionally defensive out of arrogance, but out of emotional past wounds.
Much of Glen Powell’s real-life charm contributes to the character he plays and how believable he is. The real-life changes he went through to become the actor he is today is what makes him the most interesting. Powell’s character, Ben, displays so many struggles that one can only assume the actor being \real to the struggles of getting to Hollywood and performing to earn recognition. He is more than most and that is why the character he plays is so believable. He uses humor to cope — much like Ben who he plays — and that makes Ben a real person, one that can lose the charm on the surface and still shine through the film.
Fire and Water.
As most character flaws allude to, the fake dating plot most gives character depth. Ben and Bea both learn how to be honest with each other when pretending to be together. The only time either character performs their true self is when they are acting — and this situbation opposes the opposite of what modern love calls for, a script.
Fire and water is a motif that describes this film. In scenes where there is a bonfire, and even the ocean, together with the lighting where warm is contrasted with cool tones, there is a lot of tension. While fire is a representation of attraction, water drips its representation of truth. So, the moments when Ben and Bea are most honest with each other is when they are right by the ocean. The obfuscation that comes with a fire one can’t help but feel.
The anxiety some people feel regarding commitment in relationships is evident in the wedding setting. During the wedding, the two main characters in the story witness loving couples dance and celebrate. They must face the discomfort of considering whether they themselves truly believe in and value love.
The Cultural Moment of the Film
Before the film was released, actors Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell participated in several interviews. Clips from the interviews went viral, and audience members captured the actors’ body language and shared commentary about their apparent chemistry. Sweeney and Powell’s chemistry wowed audiences around the world, and the couple defied the low expectations early critics had.
The marketing team released several trailers and clips from the film, which quickly became viral sensations, including:
- the chaotic spider-in-pants incident,
- the iconic slow-motion beach scene, and
- the dramatic ‘we have to pretend to be in a relationship’ line.
Many audience members felt that the film marked the return of the classic romantic comedy, as a studio film had finally reached the same level of excitement as the audience-created content.
The Visuals of the Film
The audience’s experiences of the film were shaped by the visuals, leaving the audience to be fascinated by the stories simmering beneath the surface.
Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell Casting Choices That Some Considered Different
Reflecting on who to cast, studio heads and producers wanted to start with Sweeney and Powell. However, Powell and Sweeney’s roles were not easily obtained and their representatives had to negotiate. Having already casted romantic leads for the division’s previous romcoms, the producers opted to choose talent with more of a modern take, talent who could successfully meld their comedic timing with a dramatic emotional flair. Sweeney worked tirelessly to not only land the role of the romantic lead, but to also become one of the producers on the film. She wanted the ability to influence and shape the emotional tone and pulse of the film by incorporating some very core emotional moments, some of which were often overlooked or ignored by the rest of the producers.
Production That Came with Some Disorganization
Cost efficient measures for the budget were present when deciding where to film, comic relief moments were incorporated from a variety of overlooked weather events, and the budgetary restraints on the cost of filming locations was ultimately an unexpected boon for the film’s final aesthetic of the finished project. When filming outside, the budgetary constraints on the filming locations led to a variety of ru- reshoots. Outside scenes provided the crew with a variety of unpredictabe environmental factors that could easily shift the lighting to a point where the viewers would spot a jarring contrast. However, the crew were often able to make use of the unplanned events. For the film, the crew even utilized on the spot improvisations when environmental factors proved too distracting.
Marketing Around Their Chemistry
The comments and speculation surrounding Powell and Sweeney had a downside. Their representatives and the production team were forced to again describe the nature of Powell and Sweeney’s activism, especially when worded so as to suggest a romantic interest. However, this speculation was helpful to the film’s marketing and advertising campaigns. The production team used the division’s PR budget to add to the speculation in a more aggressive manner without drawing their funded marketing campaigns closing the fine line of speculation and advertising.
Director’s Unique Approach to Improvisation
The director advised actors to `create alternative versions of scenes as rewrites, but not through writing, and through just emotion acting.” The improvisation was where the most اصل exchanges happened, and the scripts were out of the scene. A lot of parts were natural.
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