Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris are best known for directing the Oscar nominated Little Miss Sunshine, but often overlooked is their 2012 romance-comedy-drama-fantasy Ruby Sparks. Written by Zoe Kazan and starring real life couple Kazan and Paul Dano, this is a unique and unconventional take on the intersection of romance and narcissism.
In Ruby Sparks, Dano plays Calvin Fields, a former best-selling novelist who is struggling with a decade-long creative writing block. He’s similarly unsuccessful in his love life, and when he takes his therapist’s suggestion to start writing about a girl that keeps appearing in his dreams, he discovers that he’s somehow written his fictional dream girl, the titular Ruby (Kazan), into his real life.
Off-beat romances are almost a genre unto its own, and the temptation is always to compare. This is kind of a 500 Days of Summer meets Stranger Than Fiction, but more than that, the film really stands on its own on an emotional level. There is a memorable line in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Clementine, played by Kate Winslet, says “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”
Ruby Sparks is a whole movie made about this struggle – between one side trying to force a role upon the other person, and the other side trying to find an independent identity. It’s ostensibly a movie about two people in a relationship, but is also very much about one person and his own selfishness, his neuroses, and his need to control those around him. Calvin Fields’ girlfriend is literally his own concept, written out of thin air, to fill his every need. She is a male fantasy in the flesh. Like the best fantasy/fairy tales, the explanation of the “how” is not as important as the “why.” As you’d expect from the premise, there’s a lot of situational comedy, but there’s also a layer of depth here that isn’t present in a lot of rom coms.
The fact that Kazan wrote the script is especially intriguing, and makes Ruby’s character’s struggle for agency especially meaningful as a commentary on the many (very real) women who are often only seen through the lens of the male gaze, or as the missing jigsaw puzzle piece of the male protagonist’s worldview. Kazan’s acting is phenomenal as a girl who is bounded by the ever-changing standards of her boyfriend’s desires while trying to find some sense of identity on her own. Her character is also a deconstruction and a purposeful rejection of the manic pixie dream girl stereotype.
Fields, as the progenitor of the entire situation, gets increasingly dissatisfied as his relationship progresses from fantasy to reality. He lashes out in bouts of insecurity and selfishness and is easy to judge negatively on the screen. In our more honest moments, though, we’ve all felt like him before. Would we really act any differently? Fantasy only becomes manipulation once you have the power to make things real. Part of the journey of adulthood is realizing that we can’t bend events and circumstances and especially people to our own will. Fields’ situation is only different because his question is “should I?” instead of “can I?”
In the end, life teaches us not only that real life is messy, but that we should embrace that messiness. There’s a lot more that can be found in this world when we go outside of ourselves. To paraphrase Sting: if you love someone, set them free. Ruby Sparks is not as preachy as I’ve made it out to be – it’s fun, romantic, and satisfying. It doesn’t tackle original ideas, but it explores them in an impactful and effective way, taking you through the stages of a relationship – from the exhilarating honeymoon phase to the inevitable comedown. It’s what you do at that point that matters. If you feel like you have to rewrite someone or dump them as soon as they don’t meet your expectations, maybe that says something more about you than it does them.
Now streaming on HBO Max.
