Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love witty Stoppardian dialogue, the ironic use of anachronism and lots of sex

Shakespeare in Love is one of those films purpose-built for the "courting couple". Yet, as with so many of the bard's romantic comedies, there is an element of mistaken identities here. You think you're getting a light romantic pick-me-up. As a twenty or early thirty-something with intellectual pretensions, you would not dream of putting bum on seat for the likes of You've Got Mail. But with Shakespeare in Love you can cite witty Stoppardian dialogue and the ironic use of anachronism as justification. The appearance of Gary from Men Behaving Badly wearing a baggy doublet is an added bonus for men of the Loaded generation. Oh, and there is lots of sex, some of it involving Gwyneth Paltrow.

So, a feelgood movie all round. Well, perhaps not. There is anecdotal evidence that, far from providing therapeutic escapism, this film is thrusting a rapier into the side of relationships. Couples enter the cinema in a state of sound emotional health, and exit with seeping flesh wounds. It is less than a week since it went on general release, but in one London literary agency the blood is already on the carpet. A happily married thirty-something acquaintance reports that two of her younger colleagues have required wine-bar therapy after viewing this apparently harmless romantic comedy.

In both cases an evening at the cinema ended in a blazing row. One woman could not sleep all night, and next morning informed her boyfriend that their ten-year relationship was going nowhere. What with work deadlines, mortgages, and the scarcity of London properties with "outside space" there seemed to be neither time nor scope for balcony scenes, trysts, and above all passion.

Perhaps it's precisely because we live in a society that gives the illusion of there being few barriers to love - race, class, economic standing are portrayed as low hurdles to be unthinkingly leapt - that our emotional lives often bob along at a rather even pace.

Far from experiencing the grand amour, many of the children of the Sixties and early Seventies (the era of free love), now find themselves in what you might call "comfortable shoe" relationships. Hearing Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), declare, "I will have poetry in my life," may be all that is needed to plunge women in warm, stable but rather becalmed partnerships headlong into crisis.

The final image of Viola walking alone on some distant shore is not the most encouraging metaphor for married life. In Elizabethan times it may have been essential to compromise in marriage, sacrificing romantic love to material and social concerns, but in a freer age surely it isn't? This question lurks in the minds of thousands of young women as they teeter on the brink of marriage, but perhaps because we apparently have complete freedom to make the match we choose, it is rarely asked out loud. A film such as Shakespeare in Love, which apparently presents the real McCoy, can induce a nasty realisation that there may be Something Missing. Tossing and turning at 4am, it can be hard to grapple with the idea that there will always be something missing in a long term relationship.

As an antidote to the film, it's worth quoting one of Dorothy Parker's cynical verses. "By the time you say you're his,/Shivering and sighing/ And he vows his passion is/Infinite, undying - /Lady, make a note of this:/One of you is lying." If she's even slightly right in this jaundiced view, then compromise - and a bit of fibbing - is necessary or no relationship would outlast the first stay-overs.

In fairness, the film's script has plenty of antidotes of its own. For starters, Will Shakespeare is married, a rather relevant detail that he doesn't see fit to declare to Viola. For another, the film cuts between the love scenes of Romeo and Juliet and those between Will and Viola, as though art exactly mirrored life - then undercuts this with literary jokes. The owl and the lark that make up Will and Viola's early morning conversation become the distinctly more poetic nightingale and the lark in the play. Still, it is true that Will and Viola don't spend their early mornings debating whether to get a cleaner or whose turn it is to change the duvet cover. (Viola has a nurse to sort these kinds of things out - every girl should get one.)

So, how to survive a night at the flicks with Joseph Fiennes and co? If the cement of your relationships is already riven with fissures it's best not to go at all. If it isn't, go armed with these thoughts: Viola is a virgin, Will is a married man, and these two salient facts account for a lot of the passion. Second, the man Gwyneth Paltrow is asked to marry may have many faults, but underneath it all he is still Colin Firth. Your partner too may have hidden qualities.

Third, they always make love at her place not his. The amazing manor house with the river approach undoubtedly contributes to the romance - in other words it has a hard, material foundation. If you junk your partner for a pauper, you will never own a property with a balcony. And finally, the film is a comedy not a tragedy - they don't die for love.