One of my surprises when considering confrontation scenes in movies recently was the number of films where she slaps/punches/kicks/knees him.
For example: Definitely, Maybe
(she slaps him twice), The Holiday
(she punches him twice), No Strings Attached
(she slaps him repeatedly), Only You
(she slaps and kicks him), Miller's Crossing
(she punches him), Jerry Maguire
(she punches him), That Old Feeling
(she attacks him), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(she punches him), Groundhog Day
(she slaps him repeatedly), Hollow Point
(she punches him repeatedly), Romance & Cigarettes 
(she attacks him), The Royal Tenenbaums
(she slaps him), and Scenes from a Mall
(Bette Midler knees Woody Allen in the clods).
The one that surprised me most was When Harry Met Sally...
I thought I knew this film fairly well, but I somehow hadn't registered the slap scene. (Or the two F-bombs Sally drops during the course of the movie.)
When I asked various friends about it, not one of them could remember the face-slap scene either. These are all people who are fond of the movie. (I'd conducted an informal survey of What's Your Favourite Rom/Com? among friends a year earlier and WHMS came out on top, by a wide margin.)
 |
| Watch out, Harry, here it comes... |
Probably in Miller's Crossing, Groundhog Day, Romance & Cigarettes, The Holiday, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the
slap/punch is deserved. The rest are debatable, to say the least. Which
raises the question of what purpose these face-slaps fulfill in movies.
Are they a vicarious I-Wish-I'd-Done-That moment to satisfy a female audience still seething over some historical wrong, or do they fulfill some other function?
 |
| Bill Murray deserved it. Definitely. |
I asked a
number of women if they'd ever slapped a guy's face. Only one admitted
to it, and she pleaded serious (and violent) provocation. The others
were generally vague (read, non-committal), and some were decidedly defensive.
 |
| Edward Burns deserved it, too. |
From a cinematic perspective, I think of the Cecil B. De Mille quote: "I will trade you forty gorgeously beautiful Hawaiian sunsets for one good sock on the jaw."
For the benefit of those looking at the timing—for structural reasons—I checked five of our films. The punch in The Holiday takes place at the 12% mark, the slap in Only You at the 54% mark, in Groundhog Day at the 57% mark, in Definitely, Maybe at the 75% mark, and in When Harry Met Sally at the 89% mark.
What does it all mean? Who knows? Certainly not me. But I am now reviewing confrontation scenes in my scripts with a view to adding a decent slap somewhere.
First posted: 16 September 2011
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