Romantic Comedy analysis-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

As usual, I'd like to start this off by saying something rather strongly-I do NOT believe "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michael Gondy (2004)) to be a romantic comedy-far from it. With very few exceptions, I found little to no humor in what was portrayed on screen- just the opposite, in fact. The sick desperation with which Joel (Jim Carry) attempts to keep Clementine (Kate Winslet) within his memories was chilling to a degree that made me grit my teeth once or twice-he even went so far as to "hide her in his humiliation" a scene that, to me, showed exactly how attached he had become. Further, watching Clementine gets emotionally tortured-yes tortured-by Patrick, a man who is only with her because of his sick habit of imitating Joel's romantic memories and patterns. The torture I refer to comes from exactly that. Clementine is able to realize that something is amiss when her boyfriend Patrick (Elijah Wood) continually imitates things that Joel did for her...one scene in particular comes to mind, that being the scene where Patrick re-enacts the "Honeymoon on Ice" that Clementine and Joel shared, reaching it's climax when Patrick imitates the "I'm so happy...I could die right here" comment. It is chilling to see Clementine sit up in distress and begin to walk around, obviously confused as to what is going on. This scene also serves to demonstrate that even after Lacuna has done its procedure, the receipients retain subconcious memories of that which they have decided to erase, causing huge emotional distress when the erased memories are brought up, intentionally or not. This is further demonstrated when Mary (Kirsten Dunst) who, at the time is dating Stan (Mark Ruffalo) is reminded about an affair she had (and subsequently erased) with the head doctor of the clinic in charge of said erasing procedure, one Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). Ironically she is informed of the affair by none other then the good doctor's wife. This revelation apparently shakes her to her core, to the point of not only breaking off her relationship with Stan (strongly implied), but also breaking into the Lacuna offices, where the files of all the procedures are kept, and mailing them to everyone involved. The key point here, of course, is the fact that none of this depressing imagery and dialogue is in no way comedic-if anything, one must classify this movie as a "romantic-horror" flick, and a chilling one at that.