How Palm Springs breaks the prob­lem­at­ic pat­tern of time-loop romances

While spend­ing what has some­times felt like an eter­ni­ty in lock­down might not seem like the ide­al cir­cum­stances in which to enjoy a time-loop movie, Hulu’s Palm Springs suc­ceeds not only in pro­vid­ing plen­ty of laughs but also in cast­ing off the sex­ist shack­les of the genre.

Max Barbakow’s direc­to­r­i­al debut dares to do some­thing all-too rare in time-loop romances: it entrusts its female char­ac­ter to find their own way out. The film may osten­si­bly cen­tre around Andy Samberg’s Nyles, but its true hero is Sarah Wilder (Cristin Mil­i­oti), whose sar­cas­tic, sassy nature belies both her emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty and dra­mat­ic poten­tial. By fol­low­ing Nyles into a mys­te­ri­ous cave, Sarah inad­ver­tent­ly enters a time-loop, but cru­cial­ly she sin­gle-hand­ed­ly comes up with a sci­en­tif­ic solu­tion to escape, there­by con­firm­ing her as not just anoth­er pas­sive love interest.

Although one of the first notable time-loop movies, 1983’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, has a female pro­tag­o­nist, women have tra­di­tion­al­ly been exclud­ed from play­ing an active role in time-trav­el­ling nar­ra­tives. For these char­ac­ters, free­dom is typ­i­cal­ly earned through an emo­tion­al epiphany rather than sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in tem­po­ral loop roman­tic sto­ries such as 2017’s Before I Fall, star­ring Zoey Deutch.

It is inter­est­ing that a genre which has long been pre­dom­i­nant­ly aimed at a female audi­ence is quick to dis­miss its women as soon as a sci­en­tif­ic ele­ment is intro­duced. Sci-fi – just like sci­ence, giv­en the low per­cent­age of women in STEM – is very much still a boys’ club, and rom-coms fea­tur­ing some form of time trav­el have his­tor­i­cal­ly con­tributed to rein­force this gen­der bar­ri­er rather than dis­man­tle it.

Take Andie MacDowell’s Rita in Ground­hog Day, or Rachel McAdams as Clare in The Time Traveler’s Wife and Mary in About Time respec­tive­ly – all extreme­ly pas­sive char­ac­ters. Indeed, in About Time, Mary’s agency is entire­ly removed from the equa­tion; she is for­mal­ly denied the chance of vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent time­lines on the basis of her gender.

In all of these films, the male pro­tag­o­nists choose whether to let their love inter­ests in on their gift mid-plot, if at all. At best, the female char­ac­ter devotes her life to help the sen­si­tive, trou­bled man car­ry this bur­den, as Clare does in The Time Traveler’s Wife, which makes up for it by fea­tur­ing a daugh­ter who inher­its her father’s abil­i­ty in the finale.

At worst, keep­ing the secret results in a care­ful­ly craft­ed web of deceits at the expense of the female char­ac­ters. Wor­ry­ing­ly, this type of time-loop rom-coms also roman­ti­cis­es the idea of using trick­ery to force sex­u­al con­tact with a woman under false pretences.

Palm Springs is a step for­ward in this regard. Although Nyles tries to have sex with Sarah at one of her sister’s many, many wed­ding recep­tions, the inter­ac­tion lead­ing to that is root­ed in mutu­al con­sent. Nyles doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rely on infor­ma­tion he might have acquired on Sarah in alter­nate time­lines. How­ev­er, it is revealed lat­er in the film that he had lied to her about hav­ing slept togeth­er before she entered the time-loop. His con­fes­sion prompts Sarah to walk away, an option hard­ly ever afford­ed by oth­er female char­ac­ters whose mem­o­ry gets con­stant­ly erased.

Com­pared to Rita, Clare and Mary, Sarah exists at the oppo­site end of the spec­trum of time-loop hero­ines. While Nyles dis­plays a pas­sive, nihilis­tic atti­tude, indulging in beer-guz­zling on pool inflat­a­bles in a des­per­ate attempt to con­ceal a fear of adult­hood, Milioti’s char­ac­ter uses the loop to study quan­tum physics and talk to a (male) physics pro­fes­sor. Hers is a slow real­i­sa­tion that still goes through the usu­al comedic, absur­dist phas­es of deal­ing with being stuck in a tem­po­ral loop, includ­ing slay­ing a dance rou­tine at a bar in the mid­dle of the Cal­i­for­nia desert that, sad­ly, no patrons will remember.

After all, Palm Springs is a rom-com – and a hilar­i­ous one. It retains the basic ele­ments of the genre, includ­ing a hap­py end­ing brim­ming with pos­si­bil­i­ties, while also hint­ing at the exis­tence of a mul­ti­verse in pure sci-fi fash­ion. The film’s refresh­ing blend of love, laughs and sci­ence is its strong suit, prov­ing that a gen­der-bal­anced world is pos­si­ble, in one time­frame or another.