Thursday 18 November 2010

500 Days of Summer - A Story of Love

America, the country that brought us the romantic comedy has seemingly tried to dismantle its reputation in recent efforts with such banal efforts as 'The Sweetest Thing', any Jennifer Lopez film; it remains hard to believe that the most romantic of comedies was 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' where the focus was on the blossoming relationship between a man wanting to lose his virginity with great humility, rather than 'Good Luck Chuck' where it was all about sex, lust and nothing emotional.

In a way this is down to the narrative structure: we meet boy - boy meets girl in the 'meet cute' - they fall in love - they fall out - reconciliation - marriage (sometimes). Whilst the marriage was a more apparent resolution in the golden era of the 1930s and 40s (the comedy of remarriage) when it was in partnership (appropriately) with the screwball comedy.

With '500 Days of Summer' you get a film that is both typically an American film, yet at the same time atypical - there are French influences and disruption wiht the chronological order.   The films starts with day 200 odd, then we jump to 488, then back to day 1 to the meet cute.  But we already know that this couple are not destined to be together yet we are told the resolution before hand - this meddling with the status quo of the narrative structure may serve to alienate viewers especially female ones so used to the romantic storyline of 'love conquers all'; female acquaintances have told me that they did not get the story, why do we watch a story where they dont fall in love. This is not a love story, but a story of love: how love can make you, become you, make you joyful, make you suffer, make you love other things - so this reciprocates into other cultural formats such as music (hence the killer soundtrack), fashion and architecture.

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is 27 years old and stuck in a job he did not want to be in, writing greeting cards instead of the career in architecture he envisaged.  Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is a playful soul who does not want a serious relationship - people may argue this as misogynistic characterisation - nice enough to desire, impossible for asking for independence, then succumbing to the very things she mocked earlier in the film - love, fate and destiny.  Summer is a free spirit, but ultimately grounded once 'the one' arrives, this arrival of her soulmate is too abrupt to believe, hence why some female viewers did not connect with the film as planned.

Wearing its influences proud on its sleeve, parodying European influences from Nouvelle Vague to Antonioni; the soundtrack of bittersweet artists (The Smiths, Temper Trap). An individual bemoans his role in society, yet belives in such a sentimental trope like love so effortlessly as we see in the 'meet cute' and the film's conclusion when he looks at the camera a la Alfie, you await a wink that does not arrive but the breaking of the fourth wall works as the revolution of the romantic comedy has begun.

If only we could get Kate Hudson, Jennifer(s) Aniston and Lopez to take a risk and lets stop Amy Adams before she makes another 'Leap Year'. Comedy reflects the society it lives in, it needs to be socially conscious and more prevelant of the time - than a weak comedy with sex and fart jokes with real talent rather than Dane Cook.

'500' is reminiscent of a film from France you have never seen before drawing influence from Francois Ozon's '5x2', which used the narrative device of showing a relationship at the end up to its beginning concluding the film.

Witty but not self-congratulatory in its dissection of modern day relationships, funny without bordering on tasteless; acted with poise and skill, it is a film to cherish as well as recommend.

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