If Music Be The Food Of Love.... Wicker Park

I constantly wonder why meaningful, intimate and beautifully filmed movies like Wicker Park get such bad ratings at sites like rottentomatoes.com. What could they miss that critics need so much that they just can't appreciate what the movies actually do present? Wicker Park, for example is a warm, alluring film about the perfect love's haunting impression which never lets you rest, always comes back with the same wonderful memories which are even more powerful now that they are only that.

If the label you're looking for is "realistic", don't watch this movie, because the plot indeed uses fate and coincidence as an anchor to revolve its story around, but if you accept the fact that this is fiction which has its own inner rules and doesn't show us life in its fullest, then you could really enjoy it. Also, according to the main idea, searching for a long lost love(er), the cinematographic method used here indicates very well the fragmentation of how we remember and think, the way our thoughts bounce back and forth in our memory, from the present into the past and back again. And a lost and painful love story is necessarily shown in brighter, nostalgic hues, like all good memories we wish we'd still live in.

The excellent photography which makes the film so captivating is only overshadowed by the very well chosen music which gives life to the scenes. Shakespeare's appropriate quote isn't just random, it's indeed easier to get drawn into the story with powerful and original tracks echoing in our ears all the time. The music gives the movie a veritable atmosphere of longing and obsession, while another character learns about love and starts obsessing about it from one of the Master's dramas, Twelfth Night, if I'm not mistaken. 

And, dear critics, you'd love this, the film even has some messages beyond the conventional story line, in the use of media devices: Matt, the protagonist falls in love into a video taped Lisa, the phone also functions as an entity bringing together and tearing them apart again, we get a sense of distance and alienation so present in today's big cities, where places only have meanings when people are around, and finding someone by going into their apartment isn't an option any more.  So if you want to watch a powerful love thriller (strange enough, in that genre nobody ever complains about having too obvious coincidences) with strangely delightful pictures and an eerie soundtrack which will haunt you for days, take a look at this earlier masterpiece of the director who hit the jackpot with Lucky Number Slevin.

Is there a Perfect Divorce?

I've been thinking about this particular subject ever since I've read A Perfect Divorce by Francesca Clementis on a beautiful, relaxing holiday spent on a Greek beach. It seemed like an easy summer reading, but after starting it, I felt more and more how the author touches subjects too fragile, deep and painful for the pink girly cover. The story is about a bright (not so) young woman, who after living together with her boyfriend all her life, after just ten months of marriage decides to get a divorce. The novel describes in very witty and ironic, but not at all cynical language how their friends just don't get it, how they can't choose sides and how excruciating is to let go someone you love, especially if that's the only thing you were ever sure of.

The main problem with her situation isn't only the usual heartbreaking end of romance, but also, that her husband is the only person she's ever been with, she's ever known, love means loving him, he was there at all her important events, he's in all her memories. So breaking up with someone that close to you can be incomprehensibly harrowing. But then again, she's only ever known being in love with him, she doesn't know how it's like with someone else, what does a grown up relationship mean, what are the constants and the variables in being together with someone. So here comes her life's biggest dilemma: can she live without the only man she's ever loved, and does she dare to? Spoiler, but especially when she meets someone else, someone she could actually fall in love with, the light summer romance turns into a novel of deceptions, heart aches that grabs your stomach and makes you gasp for air.

Anyone who's ever had a long relationship dissolve in their loving grasps, should know the torment what I'm talking about. The sleepless nights wondering aimlessly how a blooming love could turn out like this, remembering all the wonderful moments when you felt so close to that person, the perfect unbreakable union which feels like a lifetime ago with this person who just isn't the same any more, who lost the sparkle from his eyes when he looks at you, who lets you cry yourself to sleep because he just can't do anything to stop it any more.

And the constant accidental thought: would it be like this with someone else? Wouldn't it be easier to just start over? Wouldn't it be refreshing to see sparks and desire in someone's eyes when you look in it, not depression, hate, indifference? The problem really shows in its fullness, when that someone, the other one actually appears, like taken from your dreams, the manifestation of your hidden desire, everything that he isn't, the other one is.

Though the third person who is the last drop in a dying relationship hardly ever gives a real alternative, and the love affair doesn't outlive the first few weeks after the excitement and picks of conscience of sneaking away pass, the blow isn't smaller just because there is a shoulder to cry on. So the question remains: is it worth to end a once loving relationship just to find out what's out there? Are you sure the rupture is irreparable, that there is nothing that can be said or done to avoid this? Except for a mutually said "yes" and after trying out all there is to help, there is no divorce without heart ache, and there certainly isn't any perfect divorce.