Can't Fight The Feeling: A Cynic's Valentine Flick List

Valentine's Day is almost here, and I thought that despite my usual disdain for the holiday, I could admit to having a few more romantic movie favorites (see previous post for the Black History Month edition). This is not a complete list, just more that came to mind.

1. Love Actually (2003)

Those who know my aversion to lovey-dovey film pablum may be surprised by my affection for this one. Somehow the film's anthology of romantic kerfuffles is improved by its British accent. A fat valentine of a movie, Love Actually weaves together several plotlines to demonstrate that love of all kinds is truly all around us. It zeroes in on guests at the wedding of Juliet (Keira Knightley) & Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), including four siblings: Emma Thompson, a stay-at-home mom who finds evidence that her ad exec husband, played by the late Alan Rickman, is having an affair with his sexy secretary, while his office mate, American Laura Linney, puts love with the art director on the back burner to care for her

mentally ill sibling; brother Hugh Grant, England's newly elected bachelor prime minister, finds himself attracted to his bubbly new household manager; brother Liam Neeson, still grieving his wife's death, helps his young stepson capture the heart of an American classmate and re-ignites his joie de vivre; brother Colin Firth, after discovering his girlfriend cheating, decamps to Provence to write his next book and falls for the Portuguese housekeeper who speaks no English.

Dad: Aren't you a little young to fall in love? (Hee hee hee...) Son: No. (Dummy.)

Meanwhile, a couple of young actor body doubles (including The Hobbit's Martin Freeman) meet on-set while simulating a graphic sex scene and proceed to have a conventional romance; a loveless dork heads to America with unrealistic dreams of finding sexual fulfillment abroad that miraculously come true the moment he lands; new bride Juliet (Knightley) is perplexed by the unfriendly behavior of her groom's best man until he reveals his own love for her; and an aging rock star on the comeback trail, played to the raucous hilt by Bill Nighy, realizes that his favorite person in the world is actually his long-suffering manager.

It's a sweet, comical, yet thoughtful film with numerous "that would never happen in real life" moments of coincidence, melodrama and wishful thinking, but somehow the film floats on a sea of its own charm and conviction. And there are some serious moments delivered expertly by the top-notch cast, with tear-inducing performances by the heartsick Thompson, the conflicted Rickman, the lovelorn Linney, and by young Thomas Sangster as Neeson's son. Being British, the script can't help but take swipes at arrogant, entitled America through scenes with Billy Bob Thornton as a sneering U.S. President, but Americans will just have to let the medicine go down amid all the sugar. Set at Christmastime with gorgeous shots of a wintry, holiday-spangled London, Love, Actually has become one of my faves for holiday viewing as well.

2. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

I am ashamed of myself for this one, but if I see it anywhere on cable, I have to watch to the bitter end. It was a ridiculously sappy, self-indulgent book, and the film would be a snore-worthy slog if not for one thing: Meryl Streep's performance. She plays an Italian war bride in 1965 whose husband and teen children go to the Iowa state fair for a week, leaving her blissfully alone. By chance she meets a recently arrived National Geographic photographer, played by Clint Eastwood, assigned to shoot the local covered bridges. Fascinated by his freewheeling lifestyle and expansive philosophy, sheltered Francesca can't help but fall in love. After a whirlwind affair of evening walks, candlelit dinners, dancing, and lovemaking, Francesca must make a heart-rending decision: leave for a nomadic life of passion with Robert Kincaid, or stay on the farm for a life of duty with the husband and children who need her.

Eastwood is a bit wooden in this role, but perhaps he wasn't as concerned with acting as he was busy directing this lushly photographed, beautifully staged drama featuring an evocative soundtrack of composed music and classic jazz gems (the Johnny Hartman tunes alone are swoon-worthy). It's Meryl Streep's movie, and the Queen of All Accents gets it exactly right. With her hair dyed dark, aproned and barefooted, utilizing European hand gestures, faded Italian accent in place, Streep gives us a woman stoically living with decisions made a long time before with no expectation of change. The dialog doesn't delve into her character's background, but during World War II, living in a country occupied by the U.S. army, Francesca married an

American serviceman in exchange for what she believed would be a better life. She left her home, family, friends, and everything she knew to live in a brand new land to learn a new language and new customs, adjust to marriage to a foreign man, bear his children and work his farm. She was likely resigned to this life, and may have thrived in it, until boom! A beautiful stranger lands on the doorstep reeking of romance and excitement. All of this information lives within Streep's calibrated portrayal, which owes more than a bit to the mannerisms of Italian actress Anna Magnani, a towering inferno of '50s-'60s screen acting (see Wild Is The Wind, The Fugitive Kind, or The Rose Tattoo).

The moment I wait to see is when Francesca has packed a bag but still can't take the final step out the door. She clutches Robert in desperation and says, "You must decide for me." Well, she realizes that leaving would be folly and stays. But the next riveting moment comes in town when grocery shopping with her husband, and she sees Robert's truck about to leave forever. The pouring rain stands in for a torrent of inward tears -- hers and ours -- as Francesca has one last inward struggle. Still, she can't leave. But when Robert hangs the silver saint's medal she gave him from his rearview mirror before driving off, Francesca and the audience know that their love will never be forgotten.

The film has a framing device involving her grown children discovering the affair after her death that could easily have been jettisoned, and for some the movie is too long and slow. But for me, this leisurely stroll under the sun of an Iowa summer watching Meryl and Clint is sweet, indeed.

3. Moonrise Kingdom (2013)

And they called it puppy love, just because we're in our teens ...

I grew up fascinated by fairy tales, with their images of enchanted lands, mythological beings, and the impossible made possible through a glorious quest. Having once been a precocious, independent kid, I'm still partial to stories about precocious, independent kids. Thus my nostalgic fondness for Wes Anderson films: the highly stylized children's storybook sets, costumes, makeup, and shot framing; serious, quirky, wise-beyond-their-years youngsters facing off against ridiculous, childlike adults; and the whimsical, episodic adventures to attain love or liberty (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel). Moonrise Kingdom has all of these things. It's a coming of age love story along the lines of the delightful 1979 gem A Little Romance (in which 13-year-old Diane Lane falls in love and runs away from Paris with the 13-year-old son of a French taxi driver to kiss under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice), albeit with a serio-comic tone. Set in a 1965 that is worlds away from The Bridges Of Madison County, the film is like flipping through an album of faded Kodak vacation prints -- all smudged blues, browns, and greens, filmy corals and soft whites. The story concerns a smart but friendless orphan named Sam who meets Suzy, an introverted bookworm, at the annual summer pageant on the fictitious New England island of New Penzance.

After months of exchanging letters, the 12-year-olds meet the following summer on the island and run off together. The disappearance of the youngsters alarms the island's sherriff, played by Bruce Willis, as well as Sam's tightlipped social worker Tilda Swinton, his by-the-book scoutmaster Edward Norton, and his hooligan fellow scouts, not to mention Suzy's self-absorbed lawyer parents, played by Frances McDormand (who's been having an affair with the Willis character) and Anderson habitue Bill Murray. Sam, an expert outdoor survivalist, and Suzy, armed with sewing scissors, manage to evade a group of scouts and their dog after a violent run-in.

The eccentric pubescents then have a few idyllic days sharing first kisses, cavorting in their undies, and spooning in a tent by a lagoon in perfect domestic and spiritual harmony before they are discovered and pulled apart by the adults. But it isn't long before Sam escapes his scoutmaster to rescue Suzy and seal their love with a symbolic marriage ceremony performed by a supportive scout captain (Jason Schwartzman) just before a hurricane strikes the island, foiling their getaway plan.
The core of the film is the natural, earnest performances Anderson elicits from young actors Kayra Hayward and Jared Gilman; while the action around them grows increasingly cartoonish and frenetic, the film never mocks nor questions the veracity of Sam and Suzy's feelings, despite their tender age. And neither do Sam and Suzy engage in sugary sentiments or cute banter; they simply interact as kindred spirits who commit their entire beings to each other, come what may. In the end, all of the adults -- including the audience -- are forced to accept Sam and Suzy's forever love as an incontrovertible fact. Director Anderson's style has been criticized as too precious or "twee," but it's still an enchanting and deeply romantic romp.

Honorary mentions to:
1. About Last Night (the 1986 Demi Moore/Rob Lowe original)
2. The Getaway (the 1972 Ali McGraw/Steve McQueen love-on-the-run original)
3. Dr. Zhivago (1965 Russian Revolution-set epic with Julie Christie & Omar Sharif)
4. Annie Hall (1977 Woody Allen & Diane Keaton classic)
5. Out Of Sight (1993 crime caper with heat from Jennifer Lopez & George Clooney)
6. An Officer & A Gentleman (1982, Debra Winger/Richard Gere)
7. Roxanne (yes, the 1987 Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah comedy is highly romantic)
8. True Romance (1993, Tarantino's love-on-the-run fantasia with Patricia Arquette & Christian Slater)