Deception and Role-Reversals: “Roxanne” vs. “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”

February is Deception Month for The Rom-Com Project, and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about one of the original “deception in love” stories – Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano de Bergerac is a French play about a master swordsman who also happens to have an incredible wit, love of poetry and language, and a huge honkin’ schnozz. Cyrano has a much prettier but dim-witted solider in the army named Christian. Christian is in love with Cyrano’s distant cousin Roxane, and Cyrano also loves Roxane (cuz people got FREAKY back then). Christian woos Roxane using Cyrano’s words and then dies during the war. Roxane joins a convent, and when Cyrano comes to read her poetry, she realizes too late that he’s the man she’s really loved all along, but then he dies because he was injured in a war or something.

As you can see, I have a hard time taking this story seriously as a tragedy. Maybe it’s because my first encounter with the story was the version on Monsterpiece Theatre on Sesame Street:

Yeah, I can’t read or see the play without giggling a little because I keep thinking, “YOU SAID NOSE!” “But I am ze queen!” Fortunately for me, the writers of the 1987 film Roxanne and the writers of the 1996 film The Truth About Cats and Dogs had the good sense to adapt Cyrano de Bergerac into comedies. Both are modern re-tellings of the original story, but the second does a gender role-reversal with the three main parts. The results of both are pretty interesting, especially when watched back-to-back.

First, the plot summaries. In Roxanne, C.D. (Steve Martin) is the fire chief in his small town: great at his job, respected by everyone who knows him, incredibly witty and intelligent. Roxanne (Daryl Hannah) is a newcomer to town, a beautiful, friendly astronomer who just got out of a bad relationship with her boyfriend. C.D. helps her with an emergency and they get to talking. He is pretty instantly smitten, but Roxanne is more interested in Chris (Rick Rossovich), a handsome, good-natured, but dimwitted fireman. Roxanne mistakes him for intelligent when she sees him buying an intellectual book, not realizing that he was buying it for someone else. She enlists C.D.’s help in getting Chris’s attention. Long story short, Chris woos Roxanne using C.D.’s words.

In The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Dr. Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo) is a veterinarian and host of a successful call-in radio show about pet care. Brian (Ben Chaplin) is a handsome photographer who calls Abby’s show for help with a dog he’s using in one of his photo shoots. She helps him through the problem. He’s immediately interested in her and asks her on a date. Meanwhile, Abby gets to know Noelle (Uma Thurman), her beautiful neighbor. Noelle shows up to Abby’s workplace one day, and Brian mistakes Noelle for Abby – understandably, as Abby described herself over the phone as looking like a 5’10” willowy blonde. Brian pursues Noelle, thinking she’s Abby, but has phone conversations with the real Abby. Both women start falling for Brian.

Let’s look at some of the similarities and differences between these films.

Beauty makes men stupid. In both films, tertiary male characters make themselves stupid over the beautiful blonde woman in their midst. Barflies and other volunteer firemen hit on Roxanne using tired sexual innuendos, and a cafe patron nearly breaks his back swatting away a bee that threatens to sting Noelle. Even in the “role-reversal” movie, the side characters make themselves silly over the tall blonde woman. I’m surprised that The Truth About Cats and Dogs doesn’t give us incidents of women getting stupid over Brian. He’s a good-looking photographer who’s British and has a cute dog. Amirite, ladies?

Beauty standards are different. C.D. is convinced that Roxanne will never love him because of the way he looks, and Abby feels the same way about Brian. But C.D. has an extremely long nose, and Abby…well, she just looks like Janeane Garofalo. And Janeane Garofalo looks like this. I know that women are expected to live up to impossible beauty standards, and those beauty standards become even more impossible to live up to as models get skinnier and skinnier. I understand that women are their own harshest critics. But I’ve met many people less attractive than Janeane Garofalo who, to put it bluntly, get laid plenty. She’s not gorgeous by Hollywood standards, but quite pretty in a “normal human being” way, and I never quite believe that she would be that unlucky in love and sex. I’d find it more plausible if, say, the men she came across were more intimidated by her professional success.

How’s that for irony? Roxanne gives Steve Martin a cartoonish prosthetic, and The Truth About Cats and Dogs pits Hollywood Beautiful against Normal Pretty, but as a result, the Roxanne character’s insecurity is more believable.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. The idea that “men and women are completely different creatures” is a theme that I despise. The Truth About Cats and Dogs alludes to this theme even in the title, implying that the women are the cats and men are the dogs. Actually, I think the movie just borders on stereotypical in its portrayal of men, as many of them fall to pieces over Noelle and rudely ignore Abby. Brian is presented as an exception, as someone who’s “not like other men,” because  he treats Abby respectfully.

Fortunately, the movie isn’t too heavy-handed with this message and doesn’t dwell on it, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Roxanne avoids this stereotype completely. Roxanne’s desires aren’t presented as shorthand for “what all women want,” and neither Chris nor C.D.’s desires aren’t presented as shorthand for “what all men want.” When Roxanne comments about mistaking sex for love, her waitress friend seems envious about all the sex Roxanne had been having, and the friend isn’t portrayed as “weird” for having a different view about relationships. There’s very little gender stereotyping in the movie.

Women wear clothes. I shouldn’t be shocked that two romantic comedies manage to keep their female characters in clothes for the majority of the time, but I am. Abby and Noelle wear their dresses with mini-boots (as was the style in the 90s), and we never see Noelle in a half-dressed state. I was under the impression that rom-coms were required to have at least one scene with the Hot Female Character at least wearing a towel, but the only one ever half-dressed is Abby, and not in an exploitative way. The first scene of Roxanne shows Roxanne naked, as she’s locked out of her house without her clothes on, yet the camera keeps a very respectful distance, refusing to objectify her. And in the last scene of the movie when she declares her love for C.D., she’s wearing an oversized flannel shirt and jeans.

Honestly, I didn’t know romantic comedies were even allowed to do that!

Because I’m worth it. How many times have you watched romantic comedies where you think the object of the protagonist’s pursuit isn’t worth the trouble? Well, I’m happy to say that both Roxanne and Brian seem worthy of the attention they receive. They’re both intelligent and kind in addition to being good-looking and charming, and they’re both passionate about their artistic and professional goals. I liked them both very much.

What about the third party? The movies differ in their portrayals of the third party love interest. Noelle is treated with about the same amount of dignity as Abby is. We’re meant to care about her professional goals and root for her to get out of her abusive relationship. Chris, on the other hand, isn’t really meant to be taken seriously. He’s a comic character, first and foremost, and while we like him, we’re not really invested in what happens to him. At the end of their respective movies, Noelle is out of her bad relationship and has a shot at a career opportunity, and Chris has run off with the waitress at the bar who was better suited to him than Roxanne was.

Friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship. The level of attachment between C.D. and Chris isn’t strong. C.D. is Chris’s boss and they have a working relationship. They like each other well enough, but there’s no deep bond. In contrast, Abby and Noelle slowly become each other’s best friends over the course of the movie. What a unique premise: a friendship between two women doesn’t fall apart when they’re both interested in the same man, but actually becomes stronger for it.

Let’s talk about sex. Sex is alluded to rather than seen in Roxanne. InThe Truth About Cats and Dogs, however, we get a near-pornographic scene of Brian feeding Noelle cheesecake (my least favorite moment in the movie – so cheesy). We also get a pretty steamy phone sex scene between Brian and Abby, a scene that’s more erotic than pornographic, making me think that the direction of the food porn scene was intentional to contrast the “fake” bond between Brian and Noelle with the real bond between Brian and Abby. (Or maybe it was just bad direction.) Either way, I was a little shocked and pleased that a PG-13 film gave a phone sex scene where you could hear both characters reaching climax – and it didn’t feel exploitative or weird at all.

What about the deception? Here’s where we reach the Problematic aspect of both movies. In both films, we’re expected to sympathize with the Cyrano character, and we do. The other characters express sympathy for C.D. and Abby and their insecurities. Unfortunately, no one ever expresses sympathy for Roxanne or Brian. We’re meant to like them, sure, but none of the characters say, “This is wrong. We shouldn’t be lying to her/him.” They say, “We should stop because it will never work,” or “we should stop because he really lovesyou.”

In the end, which deception is worse? Hard to say. Roxanne actually slept with Chris several times before discovering the truth, while Ben and Noelle never made it that far. On the other hand, Ben did have phone sex with Abby while thinking Noelle was Abby. Also, while Chris was wooing Roxanne with C.D.’s words, Noelle was actually pretending to be Abby. Roxanne and Brian both feel understandably betrayed by the lie, but they come around very quickly.They have to make the grand romantic gestures to C.D. and Abby in the end. I can’t help but feel bothered by that.

Political issues aside, how do they work as love stories? My number one requirement for any love story is believability. Above everything else, I have to believe that the lead characters like each other and want to spend a lot of time together. Both movies succeed on those fronts. The chemistry between Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah and Janeane Garofalo/Ben Chaplin is strong, and the films show us enough scenes of the characters getting to know each other and finding a common bond that I believe both relationships.

And how about as comedies? The films employ different types of humor. In both cases, the Cyrano characters are witty and clever. In Roxanne, you get the sense that C.D. and Roxanne live in a slightly different world than the rest of the small town’s citizens, that everyone else is wacky and silly and they’re some of the few normal ones. In The Truth About Cats and Dogs, the main players seem to inhabit the same slightly more realistic world as the (few) tertiary characters.

I can’t point out many hilarious scenes from Truth About Cats and Dogs. Most of the scenes tend to have a blend of humor and pathos, while Roxanne has more farcical moments. The funniest moment in Truth is when Brian, standing outside Abby’s window and asking for an item of her clothing, is tossed a Ked sneaker instead of a sexy piece of clothing. It made me laugh, a lot. But not as much as this did:

In the end, I’d describe Roxanne as a comedy with a lot of romance in it, and The Truth About Cats and Dogs as a romance with humorous moments. The former makes me laugh more, and the latter makes me more swept up in the love story – perhaps because I completely fit the stereotype of the woman who’s a sucker for a cute guy with a British accent.