The Rise of the Imperfect (and Funny) Romance

In the late 2000's, a new kind of romantic comedy came into being, with roots in Napoleon Dynamite and Chocolat, successful indie films like (500) Days of Summer, Juno, and Away We Go reflected a new side of romance--the fumbling twenty- or thirty-something with insecurites, imperfections, quirks, and charm.  The teenager making mature decisions with a killer sense of humor, spouting wry truths and embracing the inevitiblity of life.  Films like these got the mainstream movie industry a little closer to depicting the human repertoire of anxieties, doubts, vulnerabilites, and triumphs in love by employing small-scale failures and successes and painting in nuances instead of grand gestures.   I expect to see more indie-films gone mainstream that take boy-meets-girl and affairs of the heart to a whole new level by using the endearing discomfort of reality and peeling away the glaze of perfection that has surrounded successful films of the past decade.