Love Actually?

Last night, we were wondering about what was the last romantic movie we enjoyed. There was some bantering about Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice, When Harry Met Sally.

Curiously, I never realized how few of those romance movies I actually love. I liked some of them not because I found them particularly romantic. In fact, my favourite scenes were those with that hard-edge of realism. Maybe it’s my inner cynic – heh.

My favourite story in Love Actually was the morose one about near-adultery - where Alan Rickman reduces Kristen Scott-Thompson to wrenching sobs over a Joni Mitchell CD. I loved Before Sunrise and Before Sunset not because I thought the relationship in there was cool – but because I liked Julie Delpy’s awkward burst of anger as she confronts Ethan Hawke about how he had left her behind when he got married. I liked 2046 for the way it painted the ugliness of secret longings and selfish love – it was fitting to see the Tony Leung character alone and morose at the end of the whole show.

Okay the exceptions - I liked High Fidelity because it was …charming. Or rather John Cusack is charming, haha. I also liked Roman Holiday because it was just sweet, old-fashioned and cute. Who can say no to Audrey on a Vespa and Gregory Peck in a suit? Gregory Peck. 1950s Man in 1950s suit, Sigh.

The one fairly recent serious romantic movie I like is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought the ending was quite genuinely romantic. It was a screen relationship that I actually thought was worth rooting for. The whole movie cleverly used the metaphor of a memory-erasing technology to show how a beautiful, realistic love story has to be built upon remembering the good and the bad about each other. It was quite sweet to see the two leads tentatively agree to fall in love with each other again after reliving all the best and worst memories of their relationship.

I guess I am generally picky about films- especially when I have to shell out $8 for them. J Films that have managed to grab me successfully over the past few years all had to be pure fun (X-men, Batman Begins), clever or at least brutally realistic (Hotel Rwanda. The Constant Gardener).

On a tangent – I realize all my favourite “clever” films used a fantastical device to make a strangely grounded, frank observation about the things that we do to each other and to ourselves: American Beauty, Unbreakable, Eternal Sunshine, Memento, 2046, The Matrix (only the first) and now The Prestige. It is quite funny how appropriate analogies and metaphors are in talking about the human condition!

Currently reading: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Thinking of reading: John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener, Persepolis 2