This Reeks Of A Chemistry Recession

The excitement around Andrew Garfield's Chicken Shop Date episode confirms it: we're so desperate for chemistry that we're seeing it where it's not.

Quick question: has everything become so devoid of chemistry two people bantering in a chicken shop has us foaming at the mouth? 

After his much anticipated appearance on Chicken Shop Date, fans are convinced that Andrew Garfield and Amelia Dimoldenberg are serving up rom-com levels of chemistry. The eleven-minute exchange has chalked up seven million views, landing headlines everywhere from Vulture to the New York Times and even inspiring fan art.

It all kicked off when Dimoldenberg interviewed Garfield at the GQ Awards in 2022, and to be fair, it was charming. Garfield said that he not only admired Dimoldenberg’s work but sees how her comic expertise makes it look effortless. Meanwhile, Dimoldenberg, known for her deadpan style, seemingly drops the act a little in Garfield’s presence. There’s a little complimentary competitiveness, a sprinkling of natural rapport, and a big dash of mutual respect – all key ingredients to winning chemistry. But is their chemistry really that great, or are we so starved for romance that we’re taking what we can get?

@thefilmupdatesAndrew Garfield on Chicken Shop Date when? @ameliadimz interviewing Andrew at GQ’s Man of the Year Awards. #AndrewGarfield #ChickenShopDate #SpiderMan

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Your standard ‘best onscreen chemistry listicle will usually include the usual suspects: Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally; Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Mr and Mrs Smith; Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in The Mummy. But missing from many of these lists are any real on-screen pairs from the 2020s.

Granted, we’re only four years into the decade. But when the occasional 2020s entry is included, it's kind of anticlimactic. In my humble opinion, Normal People’s Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones would be nothing without intimacy co-ordinator Ita O'Brien. And Greta Lee and Teo Yoo weren’t exactly drowning in chemistry in Past Lives. (Sorry!)

Greta Lee and Teo Yoo in Past Lives (Credit: A24)

The fact is that chemistry-fuelled romance on screen has dived in both quality and quantity since the turn of the decade. To be fair, Bridgerton, Challengers, All Of Us Strangers, and Twisters were notable exceptions. There was outrage, for example, when Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glenn Powell’s Twisters characters never kissed, leaving their alleged chemistry unconsummated. Powell, a chemistry culprit twice over, was also subject to months of infidelity rumours after his chemistry with Sydney Sweeney on the set of Anyone But You.

But not only are these examples few and far between, they’re nowhere near as memorable as the horny heights reached by the likes of The Mummy or Mr and Mrs Smith. Will Powell and Edgar-Jones’ unkissed turn in Twisters be spoken about in 5, 10, or 20 years?

Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser in The Mummy (Credit: Universal)

Kisses seem to be the latest casualty in the chemistry recession, but on-screen sex scenes have been drying up for years. In 2023, Yorgos’ Lanthimos’ Poor Things was deemed controversial for the film’s multitude of sex scenes – despite the film explicitly centring on the exploration of sexual autonomy. While some argue that sex scenes in film and television are merely evolving post-#MeToo, many have also lamented the waning presence of sex scenes in mainstream cinema since 2000. 

According to The Economist, more than half of the highest-grossing films in the past five years lack sex scenes; at the turn of the millennium, it was one in three. It’s not surprising, really, when the top-grossing films of the last 20 years have been action franchises featuring chiselled but sexless superheroes that have reshaped the landscape of popular cinema in their image. 

Superhero franchises, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Universe, have almost monopolised the box office. Only 1 out of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time is unconnected to an action franchise, and money talks. Entertainment is a business like any other and in the last 20 years, superheroes outsold sex.

Big-budget blockbusters have choked out the mid-budget movie. Rom-coms, comedies, and genre films have been mostly drowned out, or relegated to streaming services. Major studios funnelled most of their theatre-release budgets into blockbuster cinematic universes and sequels with mass appeal and mass profit, and minimum on-screen intimacy.

Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love And Thunder (Credit: Marvel Studios)

Then there’s COVID. More people than ever before spent years with limited to no contact with one another: a collective experience we’ve yet to fully comprehend the impact of, especially since the pandemic is far from over. But the pandemic has made a lot of us crave and appreciate intimacy far more voraciously. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. 

It is into this chemistry-starved world that Amelia Dimoldenberg and Andrew Garfield’s Thing™️ has been thrust and by god, it shows. Many fans are affectionately pearl-clutching as if we (the audience this show exists for) are witnessing something intimate and, therefore, private. Some have even compared one moment where Garfield “calls out” Dimoldenberg’s on-camera persona to the Fleabag moment where Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest clocks Fleabag’s glances at the audience, with one X user declaring they’re “low key in love”.

For the most part, Dimoldenberg and Garfield discuss dating: Garfield repeatedly floats the possibility of a ‘real’ date, but crucially, nothing is ever definitive. Arguably, they’re using great chemistry’s secret ingredient: liminality, a philosophical phase during rites of passage and periods of change in which people are neither where they were when they began, nor at their destination. In other words, Will They or Won’t They? What makes this clip so powerful as a slice of romance is its ambiguity, the absence of a resolution. This is not the performance of a celebrity and interviewer, nor of lovers, but a secret third thing. 

Do I personally buy their chemistry as authentic? Not quite. As someone who dearly loves pulling apart love stories to find what makes them tick, it’s obvious how much of the ‘date’ was born from the machinations of focus groups and publicists. That’s not to say that Dimoldenberg and Garfield don’t have chemistry: they do, or at least they did. But where it was once something organic — an exciting thrill of a moment shared on a red carpet — it’s been milked for all its worth.

Ultimately, the larger question is why this perfectly performed flirtation is so noteworthy. Has pop culture become so chaste? Has COVID, and the sex scene drought, left audiences so starved of intimacy on-screen that even the most curated chemistry content pulls at our collective heartstrings? In many ways, the flurry around the interview confirms it: we’re officially in the throes of a chemistry recession. But, as a lover of romance media, I’m delighted that demand for down bad would-be lovers remains strong. I only hope that in the future there will be more than chicken for us to feast.

Merryana Salem is a Wonnarua and Lebanese–Australian critic, author, and podcaster. They’re on social media at @akajustmerry, and their writings can be found in Kill Your Darlings, Junkee, Sydney Morning Herald, and The Big Issue.