By Gaby Wood
Forget evening dances on the banks of the Seine. Forget passionate encounters at the top of the Empire State Building or drenched dresses in the Trevi fountain. Now that Britain is pouring out romantic comedies, London seems to have become the place to fall in love. No longer will we hear invitations in films to go up the Eiffel Tower or tour Rome on a scooter; the latest infallible chat-up line is: 'Two tickets. Radiohead. Brixton Academy. Tonight.'
But who is having this affair with our capital city? Though films such as Sliding Doors and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence, which kick-started the romance last summer, were British films, both involved American actresses. In Martha, the character was supposed to be American. In Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow played a trendy Sloane, with an impeccably grating accent. From the star now famous for playing Brits, this was an inexplicable choice, except in that she claimed to have pinned down that nasal twang to within a few square yards of SW3. An English actress might have attempted to make the accent more classless, a fact which, to some, was a constant reminder of Gwyneth's visitor status.
If Only was made in English, set in London, and starred Douglas Henshall and Lena Heady, but it was written, produced and directed by Spaniards. Writer Rafa Russo describes the city he imagined as 'a mixture of the cities I know best: London, Madrid and New York'. But all the locations were in London - it can be many cities in one. The director, Maria Ripoll, says: 'The contrasting faces of the city are quite wonderful.' Since she had only been to England on holiday, she claims to have been 'totally without preconceptions when it came to choosing locations'.
David Kane, who wrote and directed This Year's Love - an eagerly awaited, darkly comic romance which stars Jennifer Ehle and Kathy Burke, and is due to be released next week - still spends much of his time in his native Glasgow, but says he 'always conceived of the film as taking place in Camden, because of the mix of people from all over the UK. There's a lot of music, it's visually interesting, and there are a lot of people on the fringes of art and creativity, which is what the characters in the film are.'
Rose Troche, the American director of Go Fish, has just made Bedrooms and Hallways, starring Tom Hollander, Jennifer Ehle, Simon Callow and Harriet Walter. Though the film, which will be released in April, mainly takes place, as one would imagine, in bedrooms and hallways, they're all either in Old Street or Chiswick.
There is, it must be said, a limited roster of actors, not to mention locations and indeed plots, in these movies: they all seem to be different combinations of the same thing - like an endless game of musical chairs. But then, even the one which features an older set of characters doesn't end up differing greatly: ER star Anthony Edwards plays an American in London in Don't Go Breaking My Heart. He is shown getting on a double-decker bus, and the audience is treated to a mini tour: the camera dwells lovingly on Camden Lock, traffic glides over Tower Bridge. Perhaps this is intended as compensation for the fact that most of the film takes place in the homes of forty-somethings in Barnes.
Roger Michell, director of Notting Hill, the much-anticipated sequel to Four Weddings and a Funeral (released 28 May), says London is 'a very exciting city' which 'looks ravishing at the moment'. Whether this makes it a capital for romance, he is unsure. 'Lots of films are being shot here now,' he continues, 'and I'm sure they're all going to give a different version of the city.'
But the fact is, so far, they don't. Despite being predominantly British productions, many of these are foreign views of London - what An American In Paris or Roman Holiday were to their respective locations. Tourism must in some way be part of the plot. The idea, in film, is that no one falls in love in their native city. (Except in Woody Allen movies, where the relationships are so dysfunctional they give way to love triangles with shrinks.) And more than being foreign views of London, they are views, in a large measure, intended for foreigners.
These romances are love-letters to Hollywood from the poor relations across the pond. The apparent vibrancy of London in these movies is just the shiny surface of a blunter truth: it's not surprising that London should be hailed as the new romantic capital, since all British directors seem to know how to make now are romantic comedies. It's our new speciality, our ticket West, and it's a fact which leaves directors who have other interests groaning with disillusion. Thinking back to the panoramas in this recent slew of comedies - the Albert Bridge like a halo over a canoodling couple, three lovers with bunches of flowers on the Embankment, the lights of Piccadilly, the glitter of Notting Hill carnival - it's not hard to reconfigure the capital of romance as merely the capital of postcard chic.
This spirit of tourist optimism is a far cry from the days of Full Metal Jacket, when London was used as a location for war-torn Vietnam. One reason why these new breezy views of the city are such a jolt is that London is much more famous for the grittiness it has provided in the cinema. There have been scenes on the edges of society, as in My Beautiful Laundrette, Ladybird, Ladybird or Naked. There have been gangster wastelands in Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa (a genre which was taken up again last year by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). There have been throwbacks to spookier, Victorian times: The Elephant Man, The French Lieutenant's Woman, even Oliver Twist.
There was a time when the reverse of the current trend was happening: only foreign film-makers were creating the images of London we now see as iconic. It took Roman Polanski to make Repulsion, a chilling portrait of a Londoner gone mad in her London flat. The Londoner was played by Catherine Deneuve. The aesthetic of Blow-Up was a more stylised, and probably more lasting, version of the swinging Sixties London whose return is regularly announced: Georgy Girl, Darling, A Hard Day's Night. And Blow-Up was directed by an Italian.
Having said that, many of these films were designed by an Englishman. Production designer Assheton Gorton was responsible for the look of The Knack, Blow-Up, Get Carter, and The French Lieutenant's Woman, among others. He says his job is 'like being an actor. The director may want you to offer up an interpretation of London'.
Gorton describes the revolutionary techniques used by Antonioni to achieve the visual effects in Blow-Up: 'We must have painted half of London black, to neutralise and emphasise certain shapes.' Antonioni wanted to take a whole row of anonymous, grey London houses (about a 300-yard stretch) and paint them all white. That is, London is not always London. The London we see is the London we make.
In filming Notting Hill, Roger Michell has both captured a London that exists and created a London for the future. The film has had so much hype that the area around Portobello Road, which was already thriving, is changing in response.
Michell describes the area he says he has 'a lot of affection for': 'It has a very rare, particular feel. It's still a very mixed area, which reflects the pluralism of living in London. You still get a halal butcher next to a coffee boutique.' But the fabled 'authentic' quality of the district is tarnished by what's known as the 'trustafarian' population, the kids with trust funds who want to slum it in the Afro-Caribbean part of the city.
Michell says he's never heard the word 'trustafarian', and that there aren't any of those types in his film (Julia Roberts is to star). But he concedes that Portobello is changing rapidly now. 'Even since we filmed, shops that were downmarket hardware stores have turned into Seattle Coffee shops,' he says. 'I think we caught the last of it. And no doubt our film will go some way towards ruining what it values most.'
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