Worst Movie Scene No. 218

There is an atrocious scene that appears in pretty much every romance movie, or in any movie where a romance is included. I am of course talking about the misunderstanding scene. The misunderstanding scene always starts the same, and always about two thirds through the movie. The male romantic lead gets separated from his love interest for just a short while.  Then, out of nowhere, comes a horny, sexy, femme fatale who tries to have it off with the male lead. Him, being a gentleman, tries to push back her advances, but she manages to force her face against his. It is at this precise second that the man's female love interest barges in through the door and sees the kiss. She misunderstands the situation and runs off angry and sobbing, he runs after her, shouting "wait, its not what it looks like!", and we in the audience have to wait a good twenty minutes for the two to make up again and get the movie back on track. 

Can you think of anything more contrived? Every part of this situation feels so blatantly manufactured, you can practically see the writer in the room with the characters, shoving them into place to make sure it happens exactly as it does. Firstly, there is the timing of it; what are the odds that the female lead chooses that exact moment to barge in on the compromising situation? If she came in a literal second sooner or later, she'd see her partner's honest attempts to push away this mystery woman. If she was around any other time, it would have interrupted the other woman's attempt to woo the lead, or missed the situation entirely.

Then you have the whole issue of the second woman. Who is she? She's usually nameless. Often in movies, she literally just exists for this scene and doesn't appear any other time. We never get her perspective, or find out why she fancies the lead so much, or why she is willing to sexually assault him the moment she can catch him alone. Do writers believe that such women exist, waiting to ambush hapless men as soon as they're unsupervised? I can absolutely believe in the reverse happening, but - for now we must get into the sexism of it - we never see it happen in that context.

Ah yes, the sexism. Where do we start? The whole scene plays off on this adolescent fantasy wherein a guy can appeal to sexy strangers, get grappled into some fairly harmless horseplay, and then act the honourable guy who tries to push the woman away, only to get a nice big kiss out of it anyway. But this is clearly a sexual assault in progress. That would be painfully obvious if it were a man forcing himself onto the woman, but because of some societal preconceptions about men always up for it, it never gets regarded as a malicious criminal act. In the reverse, the male love interest would be diving in to rescue his girl from a would be rapist, but when the guy is kissed, he's seen as the guilty one by their partner, who apparently secretly believes all men think with their dicks.

Then there is the sexism against that other woman, who again, only exists in this story to be home-wrecking temptress. Movies really have it in for women in command of their own sexuality. In reality, a person that casual about sex with relative strangers would probably be seen as a cool and confident lady, but instead the movie takes this hyper conservative tone that such women are sluts and a threat to ordinary, decent conventional relationships. At the same time, it takes an even more conservative view that such women, whilst a problem, can't be seen as sexual predators.

And in the case of Transformers 2, a literal predator

Which leads me to the final problem - how do you resolve this situation? In movies, after a couple of tearful montages, the man will usually announce his love for the woman, she'll get all fluttery, and the whole misunderstanding thing that had just happened is completely forgotten about. At no point do they have a really important conversation about what the hell just actually had happened ("I was just assaulted by some woman and you've given me nothing but grief about it. Maybe we should be reporting this sort of thing, or at the very least, confront her about personal boundaries?")

Just once I'd like to see this big fat cliche subverted. Perhaps the man genuinely is into the adultery, so at least is the cheating jerk his partner thinks he is. Or maybe the second woman turns around and admits there and then that she might have been a bit too forward, and didn't realise she was jeopardising someone else's relationship.