Just in time for two days after Valentine’s Day! I apologize for the timing of this DVD column, but if you’re like me, you consider Valentine’s Day to be the cruelest of holidays. It’s a day designed to bring joy and happiness to people who are already joyful and happy, while giving everyone else a chance to really reflect on what’s missing in their lives. Still, it’s a great excuse to watch a romantic movie.
Here are the four of the most wildly romantic films of recent years. They are also wildly different from each other, but each is a unique, creative vision. All the films do share a common thread, however: all recognize that great love stories must earn the joy with a proper quotient of suffering.
In the Mood For Love (2000).
At the time of its release, I wondered out loud whether, if this movie had been made 20 years earlier, we’d be studying it in classes as one of the great films of history. Seven years later, it still retains its hypnotic power. Tony Leung and the great Maggie Cheung play two strangers whose spouses may be having an affair. The two inch towards each other at an agonizingly slow pace, yet the movie is never less than entrancing. Bad-boy director Wong Kar Wai (Chungking Express) showed a restraint few saw coming, and drew rich, liquid cinematography from his longtime collaborator Christopher Doyle. Featuring a haunting score from Michael Galasso (Secret Ballot), In the Mood For Love might be the most romantic movie ever in which the two main characters may not even be in love!
Amelie (2001).
It would be a mistake to dismiss Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film as nothing more than delightful trifle. Amelie is unabashedly sweet and optimistic. But it also harbors no illusions about the world – even if its own world is more fantasy than reality. Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code) gained reluctant worldwide stardom for her bewitching turn as the inward young title character. Amelie determines to find romance for those around her, yet shies away from her own possible match. That’s fine with us, as we quickly determine no man in the world is worthy of her. It’s quite an accomplishment that Mathieu Kassovitz (Munich) is finally able to win her away from us. Perhaps not since the debut of Audrey Hepburn has the world fallen so hopelessly in love with a young actress. And Jeunet’s magical vision of Paris became the new identity for the City of Love.
Punch Drunk Love (2002).
Just as In the Mood For Love came from an unexpected source, no one imagined a film like Punch Drunk Love would spring from the same man who gave us Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia. But Paul Thomas Anderson went one better, stripping away the persona of leading man Adam Sandler and finding something amazing. Sandler is revelatory as the withdrawn businessman who is shocked to discover that an interesting, pretty woman (Emily Watson) might be attracted to him. Punch Drunk Love can be quite dark, but it’s also an inspiring examination of the transformative power of love. Watson, who was in fact Jeunet’s first choice to play Amelie, gracefully fills in the spaces of her porously drawn character. Sandler should have, but did not, earn award recognition, bravely creating a man wound so tight we’re not always sure we should root for him.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Maybe it’s too soon to recall the best film of 2004. But this fantasia from Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman didn’t receive its due then, so it deserves another mention. This time the comedian stripped bare is Jim Carrey, as a man who discovers his ex (Kate Winslet) had her memory of him erased. He decides to do the same, yet somehow these two find their way back to each other, for better or worse. This was the first time Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) found an ending worthy of his concept. Gondry’s visual representation of Carey’s journey into his memories is nothing short of virtuosic. Carrey is heartbreaking without his mask on, but the most powerful force in the film is Winslet. In my favorite performance of hers, Winslet creates one of film’s great complicated women. Like Carrey’s character, we have no illusions that life with this woman wouldn’t be a lot of work. And that’s the sign of a great romance: we see how exasperating, infuriating, exhausting this love will be, and we have no doubt it will be worth it.
Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California, and works for the Cartoon Network. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for manyyears.