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I
can't think of romantic movies without thinking of Wong Kar
Wai. Besides In
the Mood for Love and 2046, his Chungking Express is
a uniquely sweet love story. I know cute sounds cliche,
but the girl (played by Faye Wong, and a role that suites her so well), who
helps her uncle at a food place, and is obsessed by California's Sun, is
just cute. All she does are cute: her little dances, sneaking into the
cop's apartment, and leaving him a boarding pass stamped with a later date
on their first date to become a flight attendant. Tony Leung (as the cop)
was cute too (though he may appear more glamorous in the later movies as
more mature men). And its ending fills our heart with a hopeful feeling of
romance in modern times. It is touching also because it's about ordinary
people.
In
the contrast,
Waterloo Bridge is about the beautiful. Still, I
like it for it is truly a romance: Romance is all about following the
heart. There is no need to deny the importance of appearance: Beauty,
together with the good and truth, are what make life worth of living. In
this sense, the beauty of women and men is the same as the beauty of the
landscape, architecture or those Greek marble sculptures. I am not saying inner
beauty is not important: It is a well of gold, and takes a miner to see.
Martin
Scorsese's The
Age of Innocence is a masterpiece about unrequited
love. Here we see two sides of a man: the romantic side and the rational side.
When passion yields to rationality amid conventions, the result is a love
unfulfilled, and a life of regret. Fortunately, men today don't value
romance as much, and thus no more regret. Somehow, it also reminds me of
one of the greatest Chinese classic novels A Dream of Red Mansions:
Politics is everywhere in life, and the pure-hearted and the artless can't
win in the arena of love either.
The French Lieutenant's Woman
tells two parallel stories: While shooting a film about the triumph of
passion in the old time, another story goes on between the actor and the
actress. The attitudes are, however, different: The seriousness of love is
gone, and newly assumed is the lightness of affairs. It seems we have
become masterful in entering and exiting such affairs without touching:
Let's have (It's) a good time together. Some say we have become cowards
(while others think we have learnt to be wiser): Not to be hurt, we curl in
cocoons. I'd rather only see the old story in the movie. By the way, that
single look of Meryl Streep standing by the sea
in the storm is sufficient to make anybody lost.
Dreyer's
black-and-white Gertrud
is perhaps the most penetrating movie looking at the difficulty of love. A
woman, in searching for ideal love, had experiences with three men: a
successful business man, a younger man (a promising pianist), and an
old-day lover (returned now as a renowned poet). At the end, her ideal was
shattered by self-centeredness of all of them. Dreyer's Gertrud was proud
and courageous: She refused to compromise. Indeed, how could she find true
love if her men set their minds somewhere else?
For
the most unforgettable love, one should see
Malena. It is a story of
a boy's journey into manhood. Through the boy's eye, it reveals the true
life of the most beautiful woman in a small Italian town. Set in the time
of WWII, much of the story is sad. It is painful to see the malicious side
of human nature manifest in multitude, but the movie moves us more with the
tender power of innocent love: Eventually the boy changed her life for
better (without her knowing it). Italian movies have a way of making
eroticism an integrative part of love stories, but Malena
goes far beyond "genuinely erotic." It is unforgettable in every
way.
The Tango Lesson is
unusual, in which an older woman (a film maker) falls in love with a young
man (a dancer). But if many old men fall for young women, why can't an
older woman have feelings for a young guy? After all, youth by itself is
beauty. It is romantic to tango through streets in the snowfall, and tango
is perhaps the best synonym of romance (see also Scent of a Women
and Last
Tango in Paris). One more word about Last Tango:
The rest of it is
not much appealing to me.
Love in the Time of
Cholera is one of a kind. I must admit even
after watching it, I still have difficulty seeing what kind of women it
takes for a man to be struck at first sight, and spend his whole life
waiting to be with her. Or rather it is hard to imagine such a man in real
life. Mr. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Nobel Literature Laureate in 1982) might
have been motivated by his observation of the doomsday of love:
Relationship is a rational choice (among many others), and lukewarm sets
the key. But I am not certain about this: I didn't finish reading the book
(its pace was too slow). Anyway, I envy Fermina,
and admire men like Florentino even if they are
paupers. On a side note along this line: Similarly, many women find
Finnegan Bell in Great
Expectations attractive.
Henry and June stands on its own. It
is a story about becoming a woman (and therefore a should-see for young
women, perhaps all women). Though we may never know the truth, at least we
have a glimpse of the lives of two important literature figures in the
twentieth century: Henry Miller and Anais Nin. We
also get to see an incredibly complex and sensual woman June (Henry
Miller's wife), on whom several of Miller's books were based (featuring Uma Thurman, and definitely one of her best
performances). Among all, however, I like Hugo (Anais's
husband): He was cool and generous. This is not a movie of black and white
but many mixed colors: Complexity is the charm. It is kind of like Miller's
books: What one sees depends on what's on his mind.
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