An Autumn Romance

Taylor is a librarian and loses her job. While she is deciding what to do she goes to stay with her brother in Montana. He runs a small hotel in the town and it is in difficulty. An investor wants to buy the building and renovate it entirely; some in the town think that would be good, others want the hotel kept as it is. Taylor stands with her brother. She and Joel, the investor, keep coming up against each other, and the argument turns into something else. It is a romantic film made for television and proceeds in the known shape of the genre. Jessica Lowndes and Chad Michael Murray take the leads. The structure is familiar: a character arriving from the city, a small town, a local business under threat and a businessman on the other side. Its chosen setting is autumn; the colours, the sets and the clothes are all built around the season, and that is an important part of the genre. The conflict is not hard; the narrative shows no character as truly bad and the investor is not put in the wrong either. The detail about the hotel and life in the town is limited; the narrative uses the place as background. Its limit is predictability; every stage is known in advance and the narrative springs no surprise. It is short and divided into sections, cut for television broadcast. Who it is for: viewers who like undemanding television romance. Who it is not for: the script is formulaic, the characters shallow, and there is no tension in the narrative.