Why are all the characters in contemporary rom-coms very rich now? The aesthetics of (unbelievable) wealth in cinema

There was a time when romantic comedies depicted waiters, underpaid journalists, broke writers, and shared apartments. Today, that’s no longer the case. In contemporary rom-coms, protagonists live in bright lofts, frequent impeccably designed cafés, work in vaguely defined creative fields, and, above all, never seem to have money problems. Even when they aren’t officially wealthy, they are effectively rich.

Stress-free love (financially): contemporary rom-coms

Wealth in today’s rom-coms primarily functions as a narrative anesthetic. Financial issues are exhausting, realistic, difficult to handle, and not very romantic. Including them would require dealing with rent, precarious shifts, and sacrifices: everything that disrupts the idea of love as a safe space. Removing money from the conflict allows the story to focus solely on emotions, misunderstandings, mistimed encounters, and emotional fears. The implicit message is clear: true love only exists once survival is already guaranteed. Certainly, it’s much easier this way.

The aesthetics of well-being on screen

Rom-coms have always been escapist cinema, but now they are visually so as well. Wealth produces neat and Instagrammable settings: minimalist kitchens, panoramic terraces, spontaneous trips, curated wardrobes. It’s a form of visual comfort and atmosphere: economic well-being becomes an integral part of the film’s emotional tone. Even pain, in a sunlit penthouse, seems less frightening, but how many of us can actually afford that?

Love as a reward, not a risk

I’ve always been a huge fan of ’90s and 2000s rom-coms, especially for their honesty. Characters like Bridget Jones seem far more realistic than the “typical scenario” of contemporary romantic comedies: a girl moves to London and meets a wealthy heir to experience the great love of her life. In these modern stories, characters don’t grow through work or sacrifice: they arrive already settled. Love ceases to be a gamble that challenges material life and becomes a reward granted only when everything else is already in place. This narrative is unrealistic and somewhat classist, as it suggests that happy love is incompatible with financial instability and, above all, that if we don’t reach that level of wealth, we’ll never have our happy ending.

The paradox of the present

In my opinion, it has become a form of contemporary fantasy: not dragons and castles, but bubble life. A bubble where everything is possible because nothing is truly at stake. The success of these rom-coms comes at a historical moment marked by precarity, inflation, and housing crises. The more unstable reality becomes, the more romantic cinema retreats into economically insulated worlds. Not to depict the present, but to anesthetize it. The paradox is that this mechanism, in the long run, creates a rift: love on screen becomes less believable and increasingly distant. Contemporary rom-coms don’t just talk about love: they depict who can afford it, relationships without urgency, without fear of the future, without the burden of “how do we make it tomorrow?” Perhaps this is why, in the end, even when these stories make us feel good, they leave a slight discomfort. The love they show isn’t emotionally unreachable, but materially so. True romance today would perhaps be telling love stories without taking the bills off the table.