Cinema has always been a playground for love affairs, whether fulfilled or frustrated. It is easy to fall in love with the movies, but easier still to watch others do exactly that. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the act of falling in love could not be further removed from its roots in ‘Golden Hollywood’ – to disagree with Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942): “[It is not] the same old story/ A fight for love and glory” – modern couples are instead preoccupied by the changing times. It is possible to understand love as now being filtered through technologies, often dependent on it, and, as a result, now patterned to its digital freedoms. Outside of this, lovers ruminate in ways that never occurred before – either swept into the political, the conceptual puzzles of postmodern cinema, or simply illustrative of greater representation. To quote Laura Jesson in Brief Encounters (David Lean, 1945): “Oh, Fred, I’ve been so foolish. I’ve fallen in love. […] I didn’t think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.”
Across ten pictures which I have loosely selected, the way people fall in love – its conventions, sex, friendships, and infrequent break-ups – are viewed from the perspective of the modern stage.
- Catfish (Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, 2010)
Questions of inauthenticity do not dim this documentary feature from Schulman and Joost, the brother and friend to a young photographer, Yaniv “Nev” Schulman, who is inadvertently caught in a deceptive, online relationship. It is via the cupidian platform of Facebook that Nav is unknowingly cajoled (or ‘catfished’: to lure (someone) into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona). Catfish, more than anything else, is a unique recasting of the traditional love story – one whose realisation has no chance of being completed. Angela, whether online (posing as one of 15 profiles) or as a person in the flesh, illustrates an open vulnerability to what the internet can afford – an escape into an artificial reality.
- Amour ( Michael Haneke, 2012)
Old age is not exempt from the experiences of love in modern cinema, not least in the relationship of Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and her husband, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) – octogenarian piano teachers, comfortably living in Paris – whose shared existence is quickly interrupted after Anne suffers a silent stroke. From here, Georges watches the collapse of her body with impassive agony, a quiet bystander to the process of death. (I am reminded of the recurring, nameless observer (played by Artur Barciś) in Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989) who sees each tragedy unfold and yet never intervenes.) Sensitively realised by the deft script of Haneke, Amour – or ‘Love’, translated from the French – is in many ways a displacing of what love traditionally represents. Similar to Georges’ tender handling of a pigeon that flies into the apartment, coaxed back to where it came from, so does his understanding of Anne require a certain approach; the nature of death distils a shared lifetime of love into a basic, elemental care between two people.
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ( Michel Gondry, 2004)
What if you could forget about somebody you loved – every single moment of pain and happiness experienced – whilst retaining your sunshine for all eternity? And, what if you accidentally met that person again? Such are the quandaries of a Charlie Kaufman-penned script, whose authorial presence – much like with Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002) and Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008) – is undeniably visible, as if spun from the same thread. Forgetting is not synonymous with escape, as Joel Barrish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) unwittingly realise. Their compulsion to reunite (and reunite again) does not transcend their fracturing memories. Everything about love to the peculiar, imperfect couple is messy – but just as love is accepted with happiness, so should it also be with pain. A truly mesmerising picture from Kaufman and Gondry.
- Valley of Love (Guillaume Nicloux, 2015)
Undoubtedly my favourite film of 2015, Valley of Love is the story of two actors – played by Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, reunited in life as well – whose paths converge around the spectral writings of their dead son, Michael, entreating them to be at Death Valley on November 12th. “It might sound like a bad joke, but I swear it’s the truth,” reads the letter, and so beginning their programmatic journey across the sun-bleached, Californian hinterland. Late in their lives – “[do you] remember how we met? […] you were handsome,” – the two recall their old love whilst searching for their son, unable to reconcile their past with the present. Touches of David Lynch texture this deeply profound, and often impenetrable, picture from Guillaume Nicloux: it is never solely one thing. It is unclear whether the couple will fall in love again, or if they will accept their shared tragedy – the fantasy of hope is ever-present.
- Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)
Somewhere, in a near-future metropolis, the everyday spender can purchase an operating system – fitting snugly into your ear, much like a translucent hearing aid – that, above all else, includes a virtual assistant with artificial intelligence, designed to learn and grow with you. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) – whilst divorcing his childhood sweetheart, Catherine (Rooney Mara) – chooses a female voice (Scarlett Johansson), and she promptly names herself Samantha (in the Aramaic language, it connotes ‘Listener’). Theodore falls in love with Samantha, taking refuge in her assurances, intelligence, and logic; she is at once a disembodiment of his own need for desire, but also, as Theodore is inevitably led to realise, a way by which to enlighten his existence and find acceptance. Her epitomises love in the modern age, a visionary glimpse into what technology can satisfy and enable for those who choose to live with it. “Falling in love is kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”
- Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002)
Indie veteran Steven Soderbergh revisits Stanisław Lem’s classic science-fiction novel, Solaris – initially adapted by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. After having journeyed to a space station plagued by unusual phenomena, Dr. Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) discovers that most of the crew have committed suicide – the few who remain on board, moreover, are persistently haunted by the physical presences of their dead loved ones. In consequence, Kelvin reunites with his dead wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), who despite knowing of their relationship, is otherwise empty of any kind of feeling, unable to fully remember what she has not lived. Experiences of love focus and unfocus as Kelvin struggles to recall his former wife: does the idea of love exist more strongly in the present, or in the dream? Solaris – both the nebulous, blue planet and the film itself – offer no immediate answers, and neither should we expect to receive them from a single viewing.
- Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
One of my favourite films of all time, Lost in Translation is the crowning achievement of Sofia Coppola’s prolific career – a beautiful ode to friendship, loneliness, and the silent, unsayable love affairs. Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an ageing actor (now resigned to Whiskey commercials) briefly encounters Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a newly-wed, young woman unsure of her future (adrift in ennui and insomnia). The two strike an unlikely friendship, experiencing the Japanese nightlife and culture, quietly falling in love with each passing day. Lost in the neon-lit wilderness of Tokyo, in their respective lives and marriages, the two find consolation in displacement by regularly talking and confessing, similar to the exchanged qualms of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963, new-wave drama, Contempt/Le mepris. Heart-breaking and comedic in equal measure, Lost in Translation is a modern classic of post-romance cinema.
- Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
Before Sunset is the centrepiece to Richard Linklater’s decades-spanning trilogy (preceded by Before Sunrise (1995) and followed by Before Midnight (2013), reuniting Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) in Paris, who had previously met and fallen in love nine years before. Taking place in real-time – eighty minutes of the film is equivalent to the same duration in their day – the two wander, ambling between streets, gardens, and find themselves tripping between conversations that become increasingly personal. Slowly, we understand that they have changed as people, even if their intimacies radiate as strongly as before; with the benefit of hindsight, reviewed memories are now imbued with a sense of destiny. It all culminates at Céline’s apartment – persuaded to play, she strums a self-composed ‘waltz for a night’: “one single night with you little Jesse/ Is worth a thousand with anybody.” “Jesse” (spoken after a brief pause) rings like a small, musical bell in the room, bringing them together in a moment of realisation. Ordinary life has never been more romantic, more beautiful.
- In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
Wong Kar-Wai achieves new levels of exquisiteness, of gorgeousity (to quote Anthony Burgess) and rhapsody with In the Mood for Love, a slight tale of men and women and the passage of time. All of the improvisatory skill that defined his previous works – Days of Being Wild (1990) and Chungking Express (1994), for example – is here replaced by smooth, gliding shots of corridors and roadways, a patience reflected in the measured pace of Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen’s (Maggie Cheung) fulfilment of love. Wong and regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle stage scenes of dialogue in humid, neon-lit alleyways, in smoky interiors, or deep in the shadows of a taxi. In the Mood for Love is a story of love but also of how easily it is evaded, both Mo-wan and Li-zhen pledged to their own, unhappy fidelities.
- Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Unanimously winning the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Colour is undoubtedly one of the most singular, fierce and painful depictions of love conceived in modern cinema. An intense, erotically-charged relationship forms between Emma (Léa Seydoux) and Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), beginning in the years of high school and continuing into later life; the two, crowded by Kechiche’s camera, are viewed at every stage of their emotional development. Onscreen intensity, however, was likewise matched to its offset environment, its director shooting approximately 800 hours of footage, whilst forcing the actors to undergo tortuous shooting routines, notably with their graphic and protracted sex scenes. Blue is the Warmest Colour is not a film that has survived the #metoo movement, and nor should it be viewed independent from its controversies – in many ways, it constitutes an abuse of cinema and to the profession of acting. Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos’ searing, impassioned performances, moreover, shine through its ugliness and are deserving of all the praise they received. It is a magnetic, devastating onscreen dynamic.
