Better Than the Movies

“I watched my mom’s beloved rom-coms practically every night, using her DVD collection I’d inherited when she died. I felt closer to my mother when I watched them; it felt like a tiny piece of her was there, watching beside me. Probably because we’d watched them together So. Many. Times.”

Romantic comedies are the glue between Liz and her late mother. They allow Liz to feel her mother’s presence and love as she navigates her own love life. Fiction has become part of her reality. This quote again showcases the novel’s conversational and informal tone; Painter uses sentence fragments to create emphasis: “So. Many. Times.”

“To be honest, I hadn’t been emotionally prepared for the emptiness that seemed to accompany my senior year, the many reminders of my mom’s absence. Senior pictures, homecoming, college applications, prom, graduation; as everyone I knew got excited about those high school benchmarks, I got stress headaches because nothing felt the way I’d planned for it to feel. Everything felt…lonely.”

The hole Liz’s mother’s death has left in her life is deep and painful as she comes of age. She does not feel like she can confide in anyone about her feelings until she gets to know Wes, who helps her feel less lonely. The phrase “To be honest” aims to establish Liz as vulnerable and open. In YA novels, teen protagonists will typically have challenging experiences as Liz does here with loss and grief.

“It just feels like it’s a fate thing, the way he was kind of dropped into my lap right after I was listening to ‘Someone Like You.’ I mean, what’s more fate-y than that? Your favorite song, from our favorite movie, and our favorite cute-ex-neighbor just happened to drop in? I feel like you’re writing this Happily Ever After from your spot…”

Liz regularly speaks to her mother’s grave as a way to cope with her grief. She feels shame over these private, one-sided conversations, but also finds them comforting in her adolescent turmoil. She imagines her mother as a God-like screenwriter controlling the fate of her and Michael’s love life.

“And I liked my predictable life. I understood it, controlled it, and it made sense to me. In my head, my life was a rom-com and I was living it like a Meg Ryan-type character. Cute dresses, good friends, and the eventual appearance of a boy who would find me lovely. Keg parties played no part in that. They belonged in a Superbad kind of life, right?”

Believing her life to be a rom-com helps Liz feel more connected to her mother and gives her life a sense of purpose and control. This idea is juxtaposed with the comedic movie, Superbad, in which teens look for a way to party by illegally purchasing alcohol. Liz uses movies, romantic or not, to align fiction and reality. The narrative repeats “I” for emphasis: “I understood it, controlled it.”

“Neighborhood friends were like that. You grew up with them, running over hot sidewalks and yelling to each other across fresh-cut lawns, but once you got older, you became acquaintances born of proximity with nothing but a surface level of basic knowledge. I knew [Wes] parked like an ass, played a ball sport—baseball maybe?—and was always laughing and loud when I saw him at school. I’m sure he knew even less about me.”

Even though they have grown up together, Liz feels like she barely knows Wes and assumes he feels the same. As she gets to know him more throughout their scheming, she realizes her initial impressions of Wes are misguided. This is a typical trope in romantic comedies; the female lead misunderstands the male lead and is later surprised by the male lead’s worth and her feelings for him.

“Stepmom. It’d be normal for me to think of Helena like that and to call her that, but for some reason, I never could. It was either ‘my dad and Helena,’ or ‘my dad’s wife.’ I’d lived with her for years now, but she was still just Helena to me.”

Liz cannot bring herself to refer to Helena as her stepmother because that would solidify their relationship more than she is comfortable with. At the beginning of the novel, she accepts Helena in her father’s life but is unwilling to let Helena into her own for fear of diminishing her mother. The narrative uses a one-word sentence fragment—“Stepmom”—for emphasis.

“Shit. I felt like I’d been caught cheating, and I wanted to disappear. But at the same time, I looked at [Joss] and realized I’d much rather be nonsense-shopping with Wes than dress shopping with her. Because there were no ties with Wes, no connections to anything painful. Prom dress shopping, on the other hand, was layered in melancholic bindings that made me feel a world of things I didn’t want to feel.”

Here, “bindings” highlight the fashion motif that runs throughout the novel; they are reminiscent of restrictive dress corsets which may make the wearer feel trapped. Similarly, Liz sees Wes as an escape from the trap of thinking about her painful past and uncertain future. Liz’s pattern of avoiding her problems causes tension in her relationship with Joss but ultimately pushes her closer to Wes. Again, the narrative uses a one-word sentence fragment—“Shit”—for emphasis.

“‘[My mom and I] would spend hours and hours selecting the perfect songs to go along with whatever event we were soundtracking.’ I realized as I said it out loud to the interior of [Wes’s] car that I’d never told that to anyone before. It was a memory that’d solely belonged to her and me, and I’d always found it to be terribly sad that I was the only one on the planet who knew about it. Until now, I guess.”

Liz is Coping With Grief and Loss by sharing fond memories of her mother. Speaking them aloud to Wes keeps her mother alive and allows Liz to connect with Wes on an emotional level. Sharing a never-before-told truth with a love interest is another popular trope in romantic fiction. This quote also features the novel’s conversational tone—“I guess.”

“Joss lost it, and Wes was laughing; I mean, it was pretty funny. But Helena was purposely missing the point of the romantic statement. Yeah, it maybe was a little cheesy, but there was something to be said for making the grand gesture. My mom would have understood.”

Helena jokes about the grand romantic gesture of throwing rose petals on a bed, and Liz feels isolated from the people in her life, as they do not value, like she does, idealized movie moments. She distances herself from her friends by latching onto the romantic tropes from rom-coms once again. Helena’s lack of appreciation for the grand gesture underscores how she is different from Liz’s mother, and how Liz keenly feels her mother’s absence.

“Adam passed the ball right at the song’s middle scream, and I was buzzing, alive in the way that I only felt when I got the matchup exactly right. If life was a movie, this song was meant for this moment. Music made everything better.”

This is the first time Liz has “soundtracked” a sports-related event because she has never been to one before. She discovers that new experiences can have a similar magic as her usual soundtrack-worthy life events. She is making new friends and going out of her comfort zone, using her passion for music to guide her.

“A tiny part of me was uncomfortable with that. Like, before I straightened my hair and put on a cookie-cutter outfit, [Michael] couldn’t understand how Wes could be interested in me? When I looked the way I liked looking, it was inconceivable to him that Wes would find me attractive? That kind of stung.”

Liz is starting to see the cracks in her idealized construction of Michael. She knows movie tropes dictate that the rom-com hero is supposed to like the heroine exactly as she is, not the made-over version of herself. Liz resents her unique style being called into question.

“It was weird how talking to [Wes] was so easy—way easier than texting with Michael. I wasn’t sure if it was because I knew Wes better, or perhaps it was because Wes knew me better. He knew I wasn’t cool—he’d always known that—so maybe that was why it felt so relaxed. I didn’t have to try.”

This marks a turning point in the novel: Liz begins comparing her interactions with Wes and Michael and discovers she can be more herself with Wes. Her ideas about love and The True Meaning of Happily Ever After are constantly being challenged as she navigates these new relationships.

“Maybe I was just feeling introspective, because—out of nowhere—I realized that my life for the past few days had felt different. I was suddenly living this stereotype of a high school life. I’d gone to a booze party, and the following night, I’d loaded into a car with a bunch of people to watch a high school sports game. […] And it kind of made me wonder if I’d been missing out. Most of the time, I preferred staying home and watching movies. That was my happy place. Joss had her softball friends that she went out with, and even though she always invited me, I always chose to stay home with my rom-coms. But now I was questioning that decision.”

Wes pushes Liz to try new things in the name of romance and wooing Michael, and soon she finds that new things can be exciting. She realizes she has been closing herself off from different experiences because grief has kept her stuck in a safe routine. Liz is slowly learning that moving forward is not as scary as she thought. She is developing as a character.

“I was dying to go away to school and get started at UCLA. I was even looking forward to the actual studies. Classes on music curation wouldn’t seem like work, would they? But every time I thought of living there, I got this huge ball of dread in my stomach that had nothing to do with California and everything to do with leaving the only place I’d ever lived with my mother. And the few times I’d allowed myself to consider the reality that I would no longer be able to just toss on my running shoes and see her at the cemetery, my vision instantly blurred with tears and my throat felt like it was closing.”

Liz’s grief is shown via physical, sensory experiences—crying and feeling as if her “throat […] was closing.” Her sense of loss prohibits her from moving on, emotionally and physically. Her identity is tied to the place she has considered home her whole life, where her mother is buried and where memories of her mother reside. Leaving home behind is daunting for all young adults but more so for Liz, who must learn to reconcile her pain with her excitement for the future. Through Liz, the novel explores Adolescent Concern With Future Uncertainty.

“[Michael] was mature and polite and charming and smart, totally the kind of guy she made the hero of every single one of her screenplays. Every script she’d written had the solid dependable cutie landing their love. Which was why I just wanted him to ask me to prom so badly. Somehow, going to prom with someone she’d known—who’d known her well enough to know about and remember her daisies—seemed vitally important. Like it might make it feel like she was somehow involved in my senior year.”

Liz’s attachment to Michael is driven by her attachment to her mother and her mother’s ideas about movie romance. Her mother wrote rom-coms, which Liz believes made her an expert on finding fairytale love. Going after Michael is Liz’s way of holding onto her mother. The quote above uses polysyndeton, where words are separated by the same conjunction, in this case “and”— “[Michael] was mature and polite and charming and smart” (emphasis added). This creates a breathless feeling.

“I just…I guess it kind of feels like I’m really losing her this year. All of the milestones are happening, like prom and college applications, and she isn’t here for them. So my life is changing and moving forward, and she’s being left behind with my childhood. Does that make sense?”

Again, Liz is finally sharing her feelings and doubts with Wes after keeping them inside for so long. She is insecure about her fears, believing they make her weird or “crazy.” Having Wes validate her feelings helps her accept them. His validation also shows that he is worthy of her love.

“I liked playing [piano] in the morning, and I liked playing in my fancy flowered pajamas with the matching silk slippers. It made practicing feel like an elegant pastime, like I was an erstwhile Austen character honing one of the skills that would make me a fearsome thing to behold.”

In addition to illustrating Liz’s love for playing music and embracing fashion, this quote showcases Liz’s imagination, which is not limited to soundtracks and movies. She enjoys living on the border between fiction and reality as she imagines herself as a heroine in a Jane Austen novel.

“‘Every time you get close to having a moment with Michael, it sounds like the universe breaks it up with a ball to the face or a puke to the outfit. I think the universe likes Wes better.’ […] The universe likes Wes better. My brain was fried by that single, solitary sentence as we went out to [Helena’s] car and drove to the shopping center. Did the universe like Wes better?”

Because she believes in cinematic fate and the power of the universe, Liz is especially moved by Helena’s suggestion that destiny is keeping Liz from Michael and pushing her toward Wes. This highlights the novel’s ironic self-awareness; a reader familiar with romantic comedies would know that Liz and Wes are indeed “fated” to be together. “The universe likes Wes better” is repeated for emphasis.

“Life pressed forward with a burning velocity that left all of the beautifully-pressed details quickly forgotten. Once I went away, nothing would ever be the same again. My dad, the house, her rosebushes, our daily talks; those things would all be different when I returned. They’d fade into the past before I even had a chance to notice, and there would be no getting them back.”

Liz confronts a fear common in adolescents embarking on a new chapter of their life as they transition to adulthood. The anxiety of the future, coupled with the pain of leaving one’s childhood home, makes the prospect of beginning this new chapter terrifying. Liz doesn’t say “her mother’s rosebushes,” only “her”; the italics emphasize her late mother’s importance.

“If my mom had still be alive, would she have changed her tune by now on the whole bad-boy thing? It seemed to me that because of things like car accidents and lost loves, life and death and broken hearts, we should grab every moment and absolutely devour the good parts. Wouldn’t she want that? For me to ad-lib my life instead of living by some typed-in-twelve-point-Courier-New-script?”

Again, Liz thinks in terms of fiction and screenwriting, but she has finally decided to leave the romance script behind. She acts on her feelings in the moment by kissing Wes, demonstrating her desire to embrace her uncertain future. Though she is leaving behind a preconceived script, this moment enacts the “spontaneous climax kiss” trope from rom-coms. This quote again features polysyndeton—“car accidents and lost loves, life and death and broken hearts” (emphasis added.) It also incorporates rhetorical questions, varying the rhythm of the prose.

“I dreamed of [my mother.] I rarely did anymore, but that night, I chased my mother in my dreams. She was trimming roses in the front yard and I could hear her laughing, but I couldn’t see her face. She was too far away.”

Liz’s dream represents her desire to live up to what she believes are her mother’s romantic expectations for her. Like her mother in the dream, these remain unattainable. Liz defines the moment by once again juxtaposing it with a movie, showing her conflation of fiction and reality.

“[…] I tried to convince myself that maybe everything had happened for a reason. I mean, the Joss thing was still a big nightmare that I had to fix, and it felt oddly empty that Helena was out for the day when I was getting ready for prom, but maybe I’d been meant to momentarily go over to the dark side with Wes in order for me to really appreciate the incredible lightness of Michael.”

As Liz gets ready for prom with Michael, she tries to rationalize away her feelings for Wes. She employs the idea of fate that has proved central to her notions of romance. She must persuade herself to be excited for Michael when going to prom with him was what she initially wanted. Her shifting desires show how she has transformed as a character. She longs for Helena, which also shows how she has changed.

“I’d pushed [Wes] away and gone for the ‘good guy,‘ when in reality there weren’t only solid, dependable people and players with questionable intentions in the world. There were Weses out there, guys who broke the mold and blew both of those stereotypes out of the water. He was so much more than a Mark Darcy or a Daniel Cleaver.”

Liz is finally learning that people are complex and multifaceted, not like the stereotypes or archetypes from her rom-coms, like Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver, characters from Bridget Jones’s Diary. Whereas she has previously characterized people in her life based on the binary of “good” and “bad,” now she sees this has harmed her relationships.