The giddy seductions of under-rated rom-com Down With Love

On the same day The Matrix Reloaded opened in May 2003, 20th Century Fox “counterprogrammed” a quirky romantic comedy opposite the sci-fi juggernaut, hoping to capture any audience who had enough of bullet time.

In the face of Neo’s destiny, Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor’s Down With Love, a pop homage to the screwball sex comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, withered and underperformed, barely recouping its production budget.

Down With Love’s director, Peyton Reed, later admitted that even he went to see The Matrix Reloaded that weekend.

Twenty-one years on, Down With Love is considered a cult classic, a smart, sassy and stylish movie that charms its pants off most people lucky enough to come across it, including famous fans The Bear’s Ayo Edelbiri and Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Sean Baker.

And The Matrix Reloaded? Well, brownie points if you know, without googling, if that was the second or third movie.

What Down With Love and The Matrix Reloaded had in common besides their release dates was that they were both, in a sense, about simulated realities. One was just less literal.

As a genre, rom-coms are make-believe, fanciful stories about (almost always) boy meets girl, overcomes obstacle and falls madly in love. The fairy tale archetype is alive and well.

The more sentimental among us might take to heart the title of the largely forgettable 1994 Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda rom-com, It Could Happen to You. Yeah, probs not.

One of the many clever things Down With Love does is it leans into the artificiality of rom-coms, inspired by, in particular, Pillow Talk with Day and Hudson, the first of three movies they star in with Tony Randall (who has a cameo in Down With Love as a chauvinist publisher).

In Pillow Talk, Day, then America’s sweetheart, plays Jan, a career woman who becomes frustrated when the phone line she shares (it was a thing that used to happen) with Brad (Hudson) is constantly busy because of his Casanova pursuits.

Later, Brad in the guise of a Texan rancher named Rex, woos Jan who isn’t aware of his real identity. Sparks and witty repartee fly thanks to a punchy script and Day and Hudson’s onscreen chemistry.

Filmed almost entirely on big studio sets, there’s nothing “real” about Pillow Talk, and while the character of Jan is presented as a modern woman with a job and an independent streak, the ending still reinforces conservative norms of marriage.

Reed, from a script by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, uses Pillow Talk’s and Natalie Wood film Sex and the Single Girl’s tropes and makes a snappy movie that both celebrates how fun rom-coms are while also subverting its more regressive conventions.

In the 1962-set Down With Love, Zellweger is Barbara Novak, an author of a book which calls on women to forsake love and instead enjoy sex without romantic attachment, just as men do.

It becomes hugely popular, is credited with starting a war of the sexes, and grabs the attention of Catcher Block, a “ladies’ man, man’s man, man about town” lothario and star writer for a GQ/Esquire-esque magazine, Know.

He’s determined to expose Barbara because in his mind, all woman want love, so he pretends to be a simple, kind-hearted astronaut from the south, fake heavy accent and all.

They go on a series of dates, visually drawing directly from Pillow Talk including the famous split screen phone conversation although in this version, the choreography of their physical movements is much more risqué while the dialogue crackles with seductive double entendres.

At the same time, Barbara’s editor, Vikki (Sarah Paulson), and Catcher’s boss Peter (David Hyde Pierce), are engaged in a potential romantic tete-a-tete subplot as well.

Everything is shot in a studio with super-stylised sets and production design, which involved bringing out of storage canvas backgrounds from the 1960s. It’s not meant to look real because the world of Down With Love really isn’t.

The vivid colours and mid-century design looks fantastic, as do the superb costumes by Daniel Orlandi, each piece made custom for the actors. Of particular note, bright yellow and black-and-white houndstooth coats worn by Zellweger and Paulson, which are theatrically disrobed to reveal colour-reversed dresses beneath.

Down With Love isn’t a musical but it has the rhythms of one. There’s a sing-song quality to the dialogue while each movement, each flick of the wrist, each sashay, suggests a ditty playing in the characters’ heads.

There is a musical number that plays out over the credits, featuring a post-Chicago Zellweger and post-Moulin Rouge McGregor singing and dancing with glee and verve. One lyric even references its influences – “I’ll be your Rock if you’ll be my Doris”.

The song, “Here’s to Love”, was written by long-time composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman who also wrote, among many other things, the Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada” from the South Park movie.

The effect is heightened but that’s where Down With Love lives, in this bright, dapper and metatextual world that is no more 1962 than it was 2003. It’s make-believe but it’s one with flair, whimsy and a touch of cheek.

Down With Love is streaming on Disney+, Pillow Talk is streaming on Binge, Sex and the Single Girl is available for digital rental