Thoughts About Her

Spike Jonze's film won an Academy award for Best Original Screenplay, and while any work by the visionary Jonze is worthwhile and garners attention due to his huge back catalogue of music videos and film, this attempt at a romantic film for the digital age is at times both affirming and frustrating.

In a near-future but too familiar to be science fiction, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a writer of lonely hearts letters for family members unable to connect with their loved ones, so they ask him to write letters to sons at college, wives on the anniversary of their wedding days from tongued tied spouses.

Theodore is going through a protracted divorce from Katherine (Rooney Mara) and is becoming somewhat insular and anti-social, so he purchases an operating system that will allow him to engage again with the outside world. He chooses a female voice, she calls herself Samantha and they slowly start a relationship together culminating in a sexual one, Samantha is voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

The film is at pains to point out that the relationship between the human being and artificial intelligence is genuine and acceptable in this near future. Theodore's neighbour and friend Amy (Amy Adams) also has a relationship with her operating system and mentions others doing likewise.

Theodore has an ear piece where he can talk to Samantha, and this cuts him off from the rest of the world. He talks only to her, and although he is perceptive and observant of those around him, he does not interact face to face with them. His one attempt at a date with another female ends abruptly when she fears he will not call her back as it is only a one-night stand, something Theodore admits to.

The quest for love and companionship has fallen on deaf ears because people are too interested in their devices carrying all the information and knowledge they require, why interact with people who may well bore you - people are both alienated yet involved.

Jonze's screenplay is a nicely meditative piece on how relationships disintegrate over time due to the demands individuals place on each other in the hope for the ideal mate, and it is surprising that this viewer found the fleeting flashbacks of the maturation and eventual end of Theodore and Katherine's relationship at times more interesting that the story of this lonely individual; it may well have made for a more interesting film.

Jonze is helped though by some beautiful cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema that makes this futuristic Los Angeles look like the most beautiful city in the world especially the final shot overlooking the cityscape with all the lights on. When it is quiet and no phones or devices are being used.

While Jonze's oeuvre can correctly be identifiable as offbeat, you hoped this film would be more conventional in its attempts at tackling romance yet Jonze's kookiness remains. This is a shame as Phoenix is exceptional as Theodore appearing in practically every shot holding our attention and gains our sympathy when he could easily have slipped into a caricature of an unloveable creep.

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.