When Rob Met Nora ...

Rating: 8/10 (10 November 2011)

If it's romantic and funny, it's a good romantic comedy, plain and simple. On that level, Rob Reiner's "When Harry Met Sally" is a 10/10 but there wouldn't be much to say and the praise would be more disrespectful than the critic, because obviously, the film tries (and succeeds) to be more than a 'rom-com', it's a very interesting gender relationship study with an undeniable pedagogic value.
And this probably is "When Harry Met Sally" unfortunate dilemma, it succeeds so much on the wit and romance department, that it sometimes undermines the realism of the 'social commentary' aspect. Yes, romantic comedies are not the most likely to depict reality with a documentary-like quality, but the Oscar-nominated script of Norah Ephron proves that sometimes, even intelligence can be incompatible with realism. When you have to conclude by a " but then, there would have been no film", you know something didn't work.
But first, allow me to say that I really love the film, and this has a lot to do with the performances of Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, who form one of the greatest romantic duos, if not the greatest. Harry is oddly appealing as the lunatic, part-anguished part-self-confident guy, with this poignant mix of macho attitude and vulnerability, while Sally shines as the adorable cute face, constantly smiling and optimistic free-spirited girl, the winning yin to Harry's annoying yang. Harry and Sally are as contradictory as moon and sun, Mars and Venus, both embodying the opposite poles that separate women from men. No wonder that in their first encounter in 1977, they have a problem of communication, especially on the touchiest subject: can a man and a woman be friends, without having sex ruining their friendship.
This is the intellectual core that drives the relationship's evolution and since Harry doesn't believe in the non-interference of sex, and since she doesn't like him, both can never be friends. Then they meet again in 1982, where their 'qualities' are even more emphasized, the result is hilariously disastrous but we know it's just a matter of time so they finally get in the same wavelength. And after five crucial years, Harry and Sally's respective divorce and break-up finally relieve them from all their preconceived ideas. Life is build of dreams and experience on disillusions, so the Harry and Sally who meet again in 1987 are the real ones, who can start a nice and warm friendship, cleared from any sexual tension.
But Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron aren't fooling anyone, Harry and Sally are passionate, romantic, they need love, not friendship, and the absence of sex plays as a paradox as it plants the seeds of a relationship that would ultimately need it. The significance of the film before the pivotal sex scene is to play as a 'Man and Women' cinematic "How To". It works as a more approachable version of Woody Allen's films, like a "Annie Hall" marketed for a wider and less sophisticated audience, allowing it to identify with Harry and Sally, so, as I pointed it out, in my "Annie Hall"'s review, the most intellectually challenging stuff they discuss is the ending of "Casablanca".
But the movie still works because the two leads are so adorable and funny together with the highlight of the film set in an ordinary Deli's restaurant. Many would criticize the unrealism of Sally's fake orgasm scene, but the timing of the scene, and the facial expressions of Crystal with the "I'll have what she's having" as the icing on the cake perfectly work. The problem of the film is elsewhere, after a while, we know they're made for each other, we're ahead of them, just like their respective friends played by Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher, so we wait for sex to point its nose and then see how it will change the face of their relationship. And this is where the movie lost me. When I saw Sally's beatific smile contrasting with Harry's devastated eyes, I was disappointed because I expected a moment of ecstatic realization.
I couldn't believe Harry would brutally leave Sally, more lovely and loving than she ever was, pretending thereafter that it was a mistake. I didn't buy it especially because I rooted for Harry and identified with his existential interrogations. The whole film was punctuated with delightful scenes where older people were telling the way they met, whether it was coincidences or loves at first sights, highlighting a romantic view that would foreshadow Harry and Sally's destiny. For me, having sex together should have been the counterargument not the confirmation of Harry's immature theory. This contradiction left me believing that Harry acted that way just because is was scripted so, and I couldn't get the reason of the mistake until I saw the 'Making Of'.
Basically, the film was about Reiner's experience as a single man, translated by Nora's script, and her personal ideas about women and men. Whatever Harry and Sally said was what Rob and Nora believed in. This worked on an 'Allenian' level when they were friends but when they got over the sex barrier, the director and the writer should have left the characters speak for them instead of keeping on studying all the possibilities before Harry would finally declare his love, this was a needless 'suspense'. What follows, till the climax, works like a 'Rom-Com for Dummies' that only works because the actors play their part perfectly? So Harry finally realize that he can't live without Sally, he needed the separation to understand that he should keep this gem of a girl for him, before it's too late.
Yes, sometimes, it takes one separation to understand the value of what or whom we're losing, and I'm speaking for my own experience. But the way it was done looked too prefabricated for me, when the realization should have realistically come from the sex scene, or never  but then there would have been no film