A Previous Engagement (2008)

This 2008 romantic comedy slipped under the radar without being recognized as a delightful revival of the classic screwball comedy. 

Julia and Alex fell passionately in love in Malta 25 years ago. Then they separated, she planning to become the next James Joyce, he the next Che Guevera. 

They pledged to meet there again in 25 years to resume their ardor. 

And so they do. But Julia arrives lumbered with her dull (insurance claims) husband Jack, further burdened by older daughter Jenny, heartbroken but with new swain Tyler in tow, and then Jill, jealous of being left out. Alex comes with his pretty and embarrassingly available assistant. 

But the old passion has survived. Alex remembers Julia’s mole. They both treasure the beach where they first made love, the best sex either ever had. 

Their old attraction reheats them at first sight, touch, and especially their first embrace whether on or under the (rented) marital bed. As fervid as their love is their anger at any perceived betrayal. 

  Accidents and embarrassments abound, for in screwball comedy -- as in other forms of reality -- the course of true love never does run smooth. That’s what makes this a screwball comedy: the forces of domestic order and conventional decorum are exploded by the irresistible, disturbing energy of love and its madcap spirit.

Also, the dialogue is as nervous and edgy as the action. Fast talk is key to the genre. “I’m a lot sluttier than I look,” fresh divorcee Grace promises the newly available Jack. And for Julia’s obligatory Canadian content: “In Canada they rut like rabbits to keep warm.”  Still, the chastened, briefly restored family will henceforth eschew dangerous Europe for holidays with Julia’s sister in Grimsby. 

Neither lover has realized their dreams. Alex came closer, now editing a literary journal in Montreal, four wives later. Julia is married to a man she doesn’t love, who brings massive jigsaw puzzles to excite him in Malta. Their two daughters are still so selfish they refuse to admit “they’re old enough to know the truth about their parents.”

The film is written and directed by a woman, the accomplished Joan Carr-Wiggin. So the snarl of romantic dreams and domestic bathos takes the woman’s perspective. 

Here it’s the heroine who gets to yell “Fuck!” — at the mirror that reflects her aging and lovelessness, at the dutiful, i.e., unhelpful, hotel clerk, at the Malta hills impervious to her disappointment and despair — and finally, exultantly, when her true love has the courage and confidence to believe she will return to him after all. 

So, too, Grace asserts the woman’s right to have her one-night stand — Jack — satisfy her sexual needs — albeit after his. 

Here the housewife moves past her decision to resume her maternal duty. She leaves her selfish, boring family to live her own life. She passes up the Penguin Ulysses in favour of a blank notebook where she can finally start her own writing. Her lover’s return only adds to her fulfilment.

No-one in her family knows Julia’s true nature and depth. “If people knew who their mothers really were the world would end.” Domestic order, marriages, world peace, all depend upon women suppressing their needs and true feelings. 

  But her dull husband Jack has his own surprising resources too, as Grace discovers in and for him. Julia’s last words to her family are “Keep dancing” — which encourages Jack to make his new life with Grace. Julia’s advice, which taps Jack’s long suppressed physical impulses, runs deeper than the tailor’s reform: “There’s no problem I can’t fix with a really good suit.” The new suit doesn't make the dancer but unleashes him. 
     The soundtrack is especially keyed to the developing emotional situation. For the initially disappointed lovers there’s Phil Ochs’s “There are no more songs.” Alex follows the despondent Jack to the Dixieland “You Dirty Rascal You,” after a paradoxically dispirited, slow “Born To Be Wild.” The lovers’ ultimate resolve is to “give all I can give, cross my heart and I hope to live.” In the screwball ethos, anything else, like self-denial, decorum or exhausted resignation, is to die.