My Director’s Statement for The Romantics

I love the aesthetic of romance. The charm, the magic. Like a lot of femmes, I grew up with the idea that love, specifically romantic love, was going to complete me, save me from whatever I needed saving from; an evil stepmother, a cursed apple, a cruel provincial town extremely uninterested in reading. Never was I in such perilous situations, but if I was, I knew a strapping prince, football captain or bad boy son of a CEO would treat me well. I still eat those stories up everyday, from YA novels, webcomics, old movies and K-dramas. The fantasy of it was nice, is nice. The escapism does what I need it to do. I leave reality for a second, became a part of a universe where things were flatter, safer, simpler. The craving for this kind of dependence is still strong within me.

Our world right now is kind of terrifying if any of you have noticed. We have to put a mask on (literally) as evils reveal themselves with an astonishingly villain-like fanfare, flashing their sharp white teeth and their suspiciously shiny red fruits (also sort of literally?). Our circles are becoming smaller. We spin alone, with no dance partner. A sad solo, with the lights too bright on stage and the audience too dimly lit. It’s hard to tell if anyone is watching us, if anyone really cares.

I was sent the script of The Romantics late August 2019 from Maya Winneg. They told me that they will be producing this piece along with its writer Maya Sims and that they wanted me to direct. When I started reading it, I giggled a lot. When I finished, I was shocked and yet still very tickled. Although a mash of genres, like romance, supernatural and sci-fi, at its heart, it was a darkly funny story about a young girl who was too into the idea of being in love and being in a relationship that it made her hideous. She stopped being a full person, with connections, with friends and family, as she became devoted to a concept that never once passed its singular flat dimension. Not like it was just her fault, but her contribution to it, her manifestation of it and its poetically random consequences was interesting to me. It reminded me of myself who still craved that kind of singular affection as an answer to all my woes.

This idea kind of helped me and my creative team sort of establish the aesthetic of the film, an ode to the anachronistic teen…