Essay: Movies About Unrequited Love

 OH, DENIED: MOVIES, ROMANCE, AND LOST LOVE

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

 

 

Left: Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seyoux in "La Vie D'Adele"

 

On a recent edition of the long-standing radio quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” a host joked that about movie love stories that involve two people “with no common interests” getting together.  And usually, most films do, but in the past few years, a string of films about failed romance and unreciprocated affection have emerged.  And while filmmakers’ fascination with tragedy-tinged love isn’t unique to the new millennium (don’t forget that Franco Zefferelli, Jerome Robbins, and Robert Wise all riffed on “Romeo and Juliet” back in the 1960s), I’ve found that the more recent films of this stripe are much closer to my personal experiences.  There’s something about the cruelty, tenderness, and vulnerability in their countenance that just feels incredibly true. 

            One of the first films that struck me this way was Marc Webb’s comedy “(500) Days of Summer,” which I first saw when it was released in Summer 2009.  I hated it then and haven’t felt the need to revisit it since, but I’ve often found myself thinking about its quirky but bitter perspective on love.  The story: Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) both work for the same greeting card company, while carrying on a giddy but increasingly perilous relationship.  Whereas Tom has absolute faith in romantic notions like true love and chivalry (after getting in a fist fight with a guy who bothers them in a bar, Tom boisterously declares to Summer, “I just got my ass kicked for you!”), Summer is different.  She enjoys being around Tom, but doesn’t believe that they’re destined to be together.  In fact, she doesn’t believe she’s destined to be with anyone.

            So therein lies the conflict—that Summer’s a skeptic and Tom’s a believer.  But one of the most potently heartbreaking things about “(500) Days of Summer” is how screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webber subvert that sensuous battle by having Summer find true love—just not with Tom.  Thus, they force Tom to face a truth that’s almost worst than the potential nonexistence of soul mates: that Summer’s credo of skepticism really had nothing to do with the failure of their relationship.  She just didn’t love Tom back. 

Such an unbalanced bond can never be anything but dissatisfying.  And yet Tom longs for Summer nearly until the final scene of the film, making you wonder if there’s something addictive about infatuation, even when you know it can lead to nothing.  That addiction is something I’ve often felt, and it’s another aspect of unrequited love that movies have been exploring to powerful effect.  Just look at Terence Davies’ “The Deep Blue Sea” (a film adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play) and Woody Allen’s “To Rome With Love,” both of which came out in 2012.  In each film, a character becomes irrevocably attracted to someone who doesn’t feel the same way (in “Sea,” Rachel Weisz’ Hester lusts for Tom Hiddleston’s Freddie; in “Rome,” Ellen Page’s Monica rebuffs Jesse Eisenberg’s Jack).  Yet they pursue the relationship anyway, not just against their better judgment, but as if they didn’t have any judgment at all.

            This might seem utterly illogical.  But director Abdellatif Kechiche’s new movie “Blue is the Warmest Color” (which I will, as before, refer to by its original French title, “La Vie D’Adele – Chapitre 1 Et 2”) offers an explanation for the allure of an impossible love.  Not a happy or satisfying one (at least not in the traditional sense of those words), but one that feels right and, just maybe, could bring this current cycle of tragic cinematic love stories to a close.

            “La Vie D’Adele” (which Mr. Kechiche and Ghalya Lacroix adapted a comic book by Julie Maroh) is about a high school girl named Adele (played by the wonderful Adèle Exarchopoulos) who falls in love with Emma (Léa Seydoux), an ambitious art student.  In many ways, they’re very different from each other (Emma doesn’t understand Adele’s desire to become a teacher, for instance), but so powerful is the attraction between them that Emma never even seems bothered by Adele’s decision not to tell her parents that the two of them are dating.  Instead, their passion intensifies until, about halfway through the movie, we find them living together.

            So far so good.  Yet in some ways, Adele and Emma’s romance seems oddly pedestrian.  They make love to each other with a commitment that’s beautiful in its ferocity, but their conversations aren’t always satisfying; there’s always a disconnect between them and the way they live.  As the story unfolds, Adele becomes increasingly comfortable with her life—she seems content teaching and enjoying her other passions like cooking and writing.  And yet Emma remains convinced that Adele won’t be truly happy until she pursues her writing professionally.  It’s inconceivable to Emma that Adele could get the same satisfaction from teaching that Emma gets from painting.

            And so, the relationship crumbles.  Feeling alienated from Emma, Adele sleeps with someone else, leading to an excruciatingly cruel scene in which Emma all but throws her out of their house.  But after that, Adele still longs for Emma, even in the concluding sequence where she attends one of Emma’s art shows, long after their relationship has dissolved.  And while the sanest choice would be not to go at all and avoid recalling painful memories, that doesn’t stop Adele from painting her nails bright red and putting on a gorgeous blue dress, trying to impress to someone who probably stopped lusting for her a long time ago.

            More than ever, I related to Adele in that last scene.  When I’ve been in love with people who didn’t feel the same way, I’ve gotten to witness a steady degeneration of our relationship, as the prospect of romance went from being likely to utterly hopeless.  But an odd thing happens whenever I get to that hopeless point.  Instead of giving up, I become more desperate for it to work out.  Call it a childish desire for the impossible if you will, but I’ve found that as the situation grows sadder, longing can strengthen and deepen, painfully.

            But, again, why?  It’s hard to say, but I buy the answer that “La Vie D’Adele” provides.  There’s been a great deal of bickering about the film’s prolonged sex scenes, but what I haven’t heard mentioned is how sex is just a single part of one of the movie’s most important themes—that there’s something wondrous and joyful about experiences that are based on instinct, not logic.  That’s true of the sex in the movie (the invigorating effect it has on Adele and Emma is stunning, not shocking), but it’s also true of the two scenes where Adele participates in ecstatic public events.  The first is a political protest (to promote better funding for education) and the second is a gay pride parade and in both, Adele seems happier than she is at almost any other time in the movie.  There’s no dull civility at either event and so Adele explodes, shouting and dancing at protest and kissing at the parade, all with inspiring joy.

            The happiness Adele experiences at these events is something wondrous, something that’s not tarnished by the pangs of doomed romance.  But I think they’re close cousins because ultimately, both rely on instinctual feeling.  You can calculate what you might say to someone, but you can’t really calculate what you might do when you’re swept up in a boisterous crowd, screaming about school reform.  You don’t have to; you get to just let go and act on instinct.  And isn’t that what Adele does by pursuing Emma long after their relationship is finished?  Isn’t that what we all do when we love someone who doesn’t love us back?  We surrender to urges that drive our actions, urges that have no connection to reasoning or rationality. 

Ultimately, operating on instinct is a perilous state of being, one that’s both easier and more exciting.  It can make you miserable but should it be avoided?  Or is it a key part of our life experience, of how we grow and, most of all, live?  In Adele’s case, I’m not sure how to answer that question, mainly because it wouldn’t be hard to argue that by the end of the movie, unrequited love has wounded her permanently.  Yet the truth stays ambiguous.  When “La Vie D’Adele” concludes, you can’t tell for sure whether Adele is still trapped in a haze of infatuation or if she’s ready to move on from lusting for Emma to loving another woman.

            To that end, I have a theory—that a love affair with one person can’t truly end until you find someone new.  True to that painful credo, “La Vie D’Adele” keeps you hoping for Adele and Emma to be together, even though it’s clearly not meant to be.  That’s especially true in a scene towards the end where they meet in a café, long after they’ve broken up.  It starts out as a series of awkward pleasantries and Adele’s unbearable statement that she’s doing fine.  But for me, it wasn’t enough to just sit idly while it happened.  Watching their conversation, I wanted to call out to Adele, to implore her to tell Emma that she wanted to be with her again.  And it didn’t matter whether or not they were perfect for one another because by then, I’d fallen so deeply into the movie that they only thing I cared about was what Adele wanted, what she cared about.  In the end, the movie brought me to that place of unrequited longing, as powerfully as any real life experience. 

            There’s a cost for such empathy.  It’s part of what makes “La Vie D’Adele” and many of its predecessors so amazing, but these films are sometimes so painful that they almost leave you in a state of grief.  And yet while I wouldn’t call that pleasant, I wouldn’t call it horrible either.  Because maybe, just maybe, infatuation doesn’t have to a negative pursuit—maybe it can come from pain but also optimism, affection, and above all, instinct.  And it’s those instincts that have driven me to pursue ill-advised romances that I still look back on fondly and those instincts that finally inspire Adele to kiss Emma for the first time as they lie together, in the grass.