Down with Love
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Down with Love is an American romantic comedy motion picture released in the United States on May 9, 2003. It stars Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson, and Tony Randall in his final film performance. The movie is a pastiche of the films made by Rock Hudson and Doris Day in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most notably Pillow Talk (1959) and Lover Come Back (1961).
The sets, costumes, cinematography, editing, score and special effects are carefully designed to give the impression that the movie was actually shot in 1962, even to the extent of digitally recreating the New York skyline and developing a greenscreen technique simulating 1960s rear projection. While the plot reflects the attitudes and behaviour of the pre-sexual revolution early sixties, the film has an anachronistic subtext informed by more modern, post-feminist ideas and attitudes; the script mixing early 21st Century ideas with the type of light-hearted banter that dominated films of the early 1960s.
Synopsis
Down with Love is the story of Barbara Novak (Zellweger), a farm girl from Maine, who finds fame and fortune as the author of 'Down With Love', a book that tells women to become liberated and free from male domination by giving up on love and substituting chocolate for physical pleasure. Meanwhile, ace reporter Catcher Block (McGregor), a playboy in the classic sense, sets out to expose her as a fraud, and invents an alter ego, 'Zip Martin', to seduce her. Along the way, Barbara's garrulous editor and publicist (Paulson) and Catcher's naïve, insecure best friend and boss Peter (Pierce) provide comic relief.
Trivia
- The musical number seen during the closing credits (and in its entirety on the DVD release) was a last-minute addition to the film. Ewan McGregor suggested that since he and Renée Zellweger had recently appeared in two very popular musical films (Moulin Rouge! and Chicago respectively), it only made sense for the two of them to do a song together. Songwriters Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman appear in the number as the bartender & the pianist
- The film features a reference to Cinemascope, a now defunct filming technique used in the 1950s, a time period Down With Love is set in. 20th Century Fox - who released this film - developed and owned the rights to Cinemascope.
External links
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