Fucking Valentine’s day. What a shitshow. If you’re single it’s just another possibly unwelcome reminder of that state of affairs and the fact our culture values you solely on your prowess in achieving and sustaining romantic relationships. And if you’re not single it can serve to highlight everything wrong with your relationship that you try and avoid confronting for the other 364 days of the year. But truth be told February 14th does not bother me that much-despite being a bitterly single wench. Christmas, New Year, my birthday (which all fall in a three week consecutive whammy of Bridget Jones misery for me) is always the time I feel the most woefully unattached and the time when I’m most in danger of rekindling it with any of my endless list of of ex melters. But Valentines day doesn’t massively arse me. This is probably because I’ve previously spent the hallowed romantic day with some of said melters and it was awful. Give me a single Vally day over one in a relationship past its sell by date any day(I mean give me one in a healthy, functional relationship with the love of my life if you’re giving out stuff, like, but you catch my drift). But if you are feeling particularly mopey and masochistic, here are my choice of films about love, heartbreak and relationships- themes that have brought out some of the best art in every form for centuries. Love might hurt like a motherfucker but it doesn’t half get the ol’ creative juices going. Some should definitely be avoided in certain circumstances(recent dumpings, a relationship hanging on by a thread etc) but they may be just what you need right now and will almost definitely be better for you, mental health wise, than going down your local and acting like Michael Fassbender in Shame. Revolutionary Road(2008) Speaking of things that should be avoided in certain circumstances, I think “watching Revolutionary Road at the cinema on Valentine’s Day with the long distance boyfriend you’re constantly arguing and definitely on the rocks with” would be a prime example. Way back in 2009, I was very much in love with my uni boyfriend who lived in Liverpool while I had taken my first job in Bristol. We were doing the long distance thing and arguing about it literally every day. He was training to be a teacher so he had the whole of February half term off to come down and stay with me and essentially sort things out. We’d booked a table in a cheesy, local Italian(what do you want from me, I was 22?) and decided to go to the pictures first. When we got there the choice was limited and all I knew about this film was that it was the first time Kate and Leo had been on screen together since Titanic. “A period romance piece will do, whatevs..” was pretty much the thought process and in we went like lambs to the fucking slaughter. WELL. In case you’re as unacquainted with the film as I was, it’s based on a Yates novel of the same name about a 1950s couple who fancy themselves as very kooky and subversive when they first meet only to end up tied to the American suburbs, suffocated by its drab and oppressive conformity, their bohemian dreams and youth fading as they saddle themselves with children and commitments they never really wanted. It essentially charts a couple falling in love and not only falling out of love but beginning to LOATHE each other in the process. It is horrendously close to the bone and depressing with approximately 45 thousand scenes featuring increasingly bitter arguments. Seriously, some of the scenes make Tony and Carmella’s break up in The Sopranos argument look like Titanic. What was so jarring about it for me personally, a precocious 22-year-old who had always romanticized arguing with your spouse as some sort of display of passion and a fiery personality(I mean, see my blog last year on goodfellas ffs..) was how this wasn’t about romance or passion. It was nasty and disturbing and very sad. I remember getting uncomfortable shivers as Rose DeWitt Bukater manially told poor Jack Dawson “I hate you. You were just some boy who made me laugh at a party once, and now I loathe the sight of you.” At that moment I honestly think I’d rather have been flanked by my dad and my Grandpa watching Baise Moi. We weren’t the only poor sods who’d made the “Titanic reunion” mistake, as I saw several bewildered couples get up and leave half-way through. But we stayed till the bitter end(an apt metaphor..) and as the credits finally rolled, my ex said “Good choice there, Elle” before we walked to the bus stop, shell shocked and mute. In a scene I would come to know well over the years, that was our “well, this is fucking over..” moment. The exact moment you both feel it, know the other one does too but don’t acknowledge it. We drank far too much wine at the local Italian and tried to ignore the other 'dining dead' around us, the GIANT elephant in the room and joke about how Revolutionary Road was like the argument we’d had on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t funny and of course we broke up about a month later. It turned out to, eventually, be a blessing in disguise and when I was finally brave enough to re-watch RR years later I realised so was the film. It’s beautifully shot, with the Mad Men esque aesthetic contrasting and masking all the batshit dysfunction lurking under the surface. Kate and Leo’s on screen chemistry is fucking phenomenal and it has great cameos from the likes of Kathy Bates(Molly Brown!) I’d highly recommend it to anyone single who needs a swift and brutal reminder that the grass is NOT always greener on the other side. Or perhaps to someone too cowardly to cut the cord on an expired coupling. Stick this on and they’ll soon be moving their shit out of your house. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind(2004) How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd?” About six months after the Revolutionary Road inspired break up, I was STILL heartbroken, the skinniest I’ve ever and will most likely ever be in my life, and generally in shock that break ups hurt as much as every song, film and TV show had told me they did all my life. Who bloody knew? So when I sat down to watch a dvd with a friend one night, she got fed up of my thousand yard stare every time she tried to enlist my help in choosing a title and stuck this on. I cried virtually from start to finish, but I’m so glad she did(not sure that feeling was mutual, however.) They were good tears, the tears of catharsis and recognising your pain, that feels so unique in that narcissistic way, represented in fiction(there’s probably a German word for that..). Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the best portrayal of the pain of break ups I’ve ever seen. Fight me. But it’s a pretty bizarre film. For a start it definitely also slots into the Science Fiction genre as it's from the brain of Charlie Kauffman of Being John Malckovich, Adaptation et al fame-so god only knows where he comes up with this stuff. It also features Jim Carey in a rare serious role so the first few minutes you're waiting for him to start chewing the scenery and gurning his tits off. Anyway in short, Joel Barish(Carey) is horrified when he realises his ex Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet, AGAIN) has undergone a procedure to have him 'erased' from her memory and sets out to get the same thing done himself out of spite and to get even. Something goes a bit wrong with his, though. He's technically awake, but trapped in his own mind as the memories unfold in reverse chronological order- meaning we get to watch him lucid dream his way through the relationship from end back to beginning. As he experiences the memories again he begins to regret the procedure and tries to fight it. Now, this film takes a littttle getting into. Ie you'll be thinking "what the fuck is going on?" for about twenty minutes. But if you can ride through the initial bumpiness it settles into something so beautiful and poignant I could cry now just thinking about it. I could also gush about it all day but in the interests of space and your attention span, I'll whittle its appeal down some. What really makes it for me is the way it nails the little in-jokes and otherwise unremarkable events that truly make a relationship intimate and thus painful as fuck when it ends. At the same time, the intimate pain of these moments is usually impossible to convey to outsiders. I mean, think of one couple you know whose pet nicknames or in jokes you don't find nauseating and odd? Yeah, you can't. But when it's you it feels like your everything and your whole being. So to get us to care about this extremely run of the mill couple's little pillow talk moments and quirks is no easy feat. One sequence that comes to mind is the part where Clementine and Joel are watching a circus parade of elephants through the streets. Joel is messing around pretending to be an elephant with his coat over his head and she is sort of play-fighting with him saying "I want to be an elephant.." as he lifts her onto his back. Absolutely nonsense conversation and the sort of thing I'd roll my eyes at in public and cross the street. All the while, interspersed is Kirsten Dunst quoting the titular Pope Alexander quote over the top, in the present day helping with the procedure, (yeah I know but it makes sense if you watch it..) It's weird, goose bump inducing and haunting cos you know exactly the sort of little moment it is invoking- and that he's saying goodbye to it. It hurts so much to remember these things when you're heartbroken but is it worth getting rid of every nice memory? Of course, they broke up for a reason so we also get to see some good bickering scenes(seriously, Kate Winslet loves a fucking barney) that are relatable and well done, too. And eventually we land on when and how they met, at which point I completely lose the plot. The first time I saw this bit, I couldn't put my finger on what was SO sad about it. I mean yeah I'd recently been through my first break up, I'm not that fucking dense. But it felt like my subconscious knew what the scene was getting at before my conscious brain did, if that makes ANY sense at all? Like it got me right in some primal part of my gut. Basically, we see them have that break-up, relationship 'debrief' you sometimes have when you've both accepted the end, any shouting and anger has dissipated and you're both sort of just sat there picking over things- often even laughing, ruefully. It's their goodbye but it's at their beginning, where they met. Impulsive Clementine was trying to make Joel break into a rich person's summer house on a beach in Montauk after a party and Joel bottled it and left(fair play, tbh) But present in the memory he says "Now I wish I stayed. I wish I did a lot of things.." Absolute kudos to Carey for the pathos and regret in that one line. Coupled with the most bittersweet little, plinky piano score it absolutely finished me off. I won't spoil the actual ending in so many words(like I have done with the rest of the film) but its overriding message is that love is horrendously painful but most of us never give up trying to find it , even when we know the most likely outcome is hurt and sorrow at some point. And when you think about it that's actually way less cynical than it sounds. In fact I'd say it's stupidly hopeful. Blue is the warmest colour(2013) Now it may seem that I'm including this title for its double whammy foreign language and LGBT representation, but that's only partly true. J'adore this film(that's French..) but I know it's is a bit of a marmite one and currently has some #metoo issues surrounding the director and how he achieved some of those exceptionally gratuitous, twelve year long sex scenes. So it definitely won't be to everyone's taste. However, I found it a really powerful 'coming of age'(hate that term but it really does apply here) story about a young high school student Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) meeting slightly older lesbian, Emma, and falling madly in love, before getting her heart absolutely smashed to bits. The falling in love bit is great, and it totally resonates as I too fell a bit in love with Léa Seydoux(now of Bond girl fame, I believe) and her bright blue pixie crop, all cocky and French and worldly-wise. But the real kicker is the falling out of love bit(because I'm bitter). It's three hours long so by my estimate it's 2/3rds of love and 1/3rd heatbreak. Emma is a bohemian and confident artist and Adele a shy, relatively unambitious wallflower. There's also clearly some sort of class conflict between the two as we see both girls meet the others' parents to show the contrast between their backgrounds. Adele's family serve simple spaghetti and talk about getting good paying jobs while Emma's parents serve seafood and discuss art and philosophy. In all seriousness though, I needed hitting over the head with this point a bit harder as working class French people still seem like classy Parisians to me and I was sat there watching it like Homer Simpson not really seeing the distinction. Anyway, their differences eventually force Adele to cheat out of neglect and loneliness and they have an almighty brawl(couple brawling sounds ace in French) and split. Adele basically just never gets over it and mopes around all beautiful and heartbroken for like years afterwards. Adele mate, I feel vous. There's this absolutely gut wrenching scene where they agree to meet for a drink and Emma has totally moved on and tries to tell her this straight for some tough love but they end up having this really weird, angry neck in public. (which is basically a PSA about why you should never meet up with any ex for "a drink") Adele then says resignedly ,all pride and fucks about dignity out the window, "I want you. All the time. No-one else." And again, Adele I feel vous. One of the simplest lines to sum up unrequited love, I ever heard. (Or read, as she said it in French and I read the subtitles obvs). It's a lovely, universal story and worth watching for several reasons but not least of which to remind yourself, if needed, that even stunning, chic French girls get their heartbroken royally from time to time. C'est la vie.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
February 2018
Categories |