Channeling Maria Elena

Call me sappy and neurotic, but I was particularly moved by Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona.

"It will always be romantic because it will never be complete." This line got stuck on repeat in my head, and I spent much of the movie debating its validity with the actors on screen. If romance derives from longing, unfulfilled passion and the intrigue of the unknown, then romance will forever be attributed to the one that got away, not the one you are with. All at once, Allen seems to affirm and debunk the myths about love and romance that Hollywood loves to perpetuate: love is eternal but transient, the one is out there, but love and attraction follow no rhyme or reason, love's tenderness is intricately tied with its brutality. These things we know about love's Gemini nature; we have yet to figure out how to deal with them. They were meant to be and they were not meant to be, he loves her and hates her, can't they just live happily ever after already? But I'm glad they don't. I can't tell who I feel for more; the woman whose dissatisfaction comes from never being satisfied or the woman whose discontent stems from the fact that she settled.

And then came Maria Elena: her wild gesticulating, historonics and emotionality seemed all too familiar. I was glad to see a character that acted like I have often felt. Granted, I have never taken a gun to anyone, but the notion that love can and does make a person do irrational things must be affirmed. If anything, perhaps I will stop trying to quell my inner Maria Elena. Life seems a lot more interesting that way.

I’ve lost my taste for romantic comedies over the past few years, and while I'd like to get swept away in epic love stories, they only succeed in whipping up a mental backlash of reality to neutralize the romance. Perhaps that is why I appreciate it so much when art speaks the truth: that love often brings us more misery than joy, that romance and marriage mix like oil and water, and that, although it might be a gross distortion, the extent of our suffering is often a litmus test for the authenticity of our passion.

So who knows? With any luck, maybe someday I’ll end up a disarming Spaniard’s emotionally unstable ex-lover or married to a dial tone of a man who is totally predictable and just plain fine. Maybe in another life, I will be a sultry Spanish woman in a love/hate relationship with Javier Bardem. Or perhaps I will remain perpetually unsatisfied, certain only of what I do not want.

I suppose one thing is for certain. In the movie, the characters are neither here nor their, constantly torn asunder between logic and emotional, heart and head. Life moves on and the summer ends, but Woody likes to keep reminding us that life offers no resolution at all.