Half of art seems to be about the heady feeling of falling in love, but it’s rarely done convincingly or in any detail; it’s such a universal experience that a lot of writers, filmmakers, songwriters, etc. shorthand the whole thing with big, familiar tropes like “They hate each other, then they love each other” or the corny, easy “love at first sight” moment. Who do you think has done it well? What are your favorite stories in any medium about people falling in love?
Tasha Robinson
We did an Inventory on falling-in-love movies we believe in a few years ago, but this seems like a good opportunity to revisit the topic, and expand it to other media. To wit: This is a really basic version of the trope, and it’s a “First they hate each other, then they love each other” story to boot, but whenever I think about falling-in-love stories, I flash back to Emma Bull’s novel War For The Oaks, largely because it has one of the most apt descriptions of love I’ve ever seen. A male character is assigned to the female protagonist as a minder and protector; he resents her and treats her first dismissively, then with courtly fake affection, but in a slow, well-released development throughout the book, her courage and her personality have an effect on him over time. When he eventually tries to explain his feelings, he’s blunt, awkward, and confused about how it all happened and what it means, but all he knows is that he finds his thoughts drifting toward her no matter what he’s doing, and that jokes are funnier if she laughs at them, and everything around him “is colored by what I imagine you will say of it.” Simply put, she’s gotten under his skin, and he can’t explain why, he can only observe the effects with a certain amount of bemusement and a lot of frustrated need. All too often, I think that’s how love works, which is why it’s so magical when a love interest responds, and you can stop thinking about how and why it all happened, and just enjoy it.
Ryan McGee
I’ll go for one that is about two people falling back in love at the precise moment that they try and remove any and all feelings for each other. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has a science-fiction conceit atop a living, breathing, beating heart at the center of its near-future tale. It’s nominally about a device that purges painful memories from a patient’s mind, but seemingly cannot remove them from the patient’s heart. It’s told in typically loopy, non-linear fashion through Charlie Kaufman’s script and Michel Gondry’s direction: We see the estranged couple at the end of their relationship, then work backward to rediscover what they once found so appealing in each other. The movie gives the pair an opportunity to start again, but crucially, doesn’t guarantee them a happy ending on their second attempt. And yet the couple gladly takes the unknown journey again together, knowing full well how terribly it ended the first time. There’s something thrillingly optimistic about that choice, and in the idea that love isn’t something you find once, it’s something you can potentially rediscover again and again.
Zack Handlen
Falling in love is about finding someone you can’t stop looking at. That’s one of the reasons we so often get it confused with pure physical attractiveness, I think, because both start from that same point of fascination. And it may be why we so readily become infatuated with movie stars; when the movies do their jobs right, the stars have all the surface qualities we yearn for, and we bring our own depth. I’m not sure if I can pinpoint exactly what the difference is between attraction and love, but it must be something to do with the expression on our faces as we stare, transfixed. In lust, our faces go blank, as a purely animal need consumes us. But when we’re in love, first tipping and then falling, there’s a reflex spasm at the corners of your mouth, and you just can’t stop smiling. Drive is, by design, a movie of surfaces, and for those on its particular wavelength, it’s all the more affecting because of that deeply felt shallowness, the way it strips down a complicated plot so that the most basic moments resonate. Like, say, a romance. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan are good-looking, and in the logic of movies like this, of course they’re going to be drawn to each other. But Drive makes this work by showing time and again how Gosling and Mulligan can’t stop watching each other, and the way they can’t help grinning at what they see. It’s simplicity done right, and it means that when the movie turns violent, we know exactly how much is at stake.
Phil Nugent
You never forget your first big vicarious experience with a falling-in-love story, and mine was probably the romance of Swamp Thing and Abby Arcane, which blossomed during the early issues of Alan Moore’s run on the comic. He was a towering hunk of sentient vegetation; she was a sensitive hippie with snow-white hair and an open-minded attitude regarding the date-worthy. Sure, her first response was to find him scary and even a little repulsive, but after they got to know each other, it seemed as if they could become unlikely friends. Maybe, who knows, even more than friends, if she weren’t married. Then it turned out that her pathetic drunk of a husband was actually possessed by the spirit of her evil, incestuous uncle, and Swamp Thing ended up literally journeying to the bowels of hell to bring her back to the surface and restore her to life, which is the kind of thing that might make a girl wonder if she hadn’t settled. The details were fantastical, but what matters is whether the emotional development underneath it all rings true, and boy, at the very least, I sure wanted it to. I’ve heard that after Moore left the comic, Swamp Thing and Abby (who’d since married and started having psychedelic mammal/vegetable sex) started having problems, but I’ve never wanted to know for sure.
Kyle Ryan
The gloriously sappy pop song “Chesterfield King” by Jawbreaker is an anomaly amid the brooding post-hardcore on Bivouac, the band’s phenomenal second album. Guitarist-vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach expertly captures the tentative, clumsy pre-relationship moments that stretch on interminably until someone makes a move. As a couple shares an awkward moment hanging out, the narrator bails because he’s “too scared to say a thing.” “Left your house and kicked myself / put those feelings on a shelf to die / I guess I’m not the gambling type / but think of what the two of us had lost.” He doesn’t stay away long. In a scene worthy of a Jennifer Aniston film, he talks over his girl problem with a vagrant in a 7-Eleven parking lot, then comes barreling down his crush’s street to find her sitting on her steps, teary-eyed. “We pulled each other into one / parkas clinging on the lawn / and kissed right there.” Yup, it’s cheesy, but the final lines of the song sweetly describe the mundane moments that follow that big, cinematic kiss: ”Held your hand and watched TV / traced the little lines along your palm.” Each time I hear it, I feel like my heart grows 10 times, Grinch-style.
Jason Heller
I’ve written about David Eddings’ epic fantasy series The Belgariad in a couple of AVQAs, so I won’t bore everyone (or embarrass myself) once again by recounting how many times I’ve read those damn books since I was a kid. But I will say this: Although the grudging flirtation between The Belgariad’s protagonist Garion and the bratty princess Ce’Nedra is handled with wit and warmth by Eddings, that relationship is focused on and stretched out to a sometimes tedious extreme throughout the series’ five novels. Far more subtle and moving, though, is the romance between Garion’s living ancestor, Polgara, and Durnik, her eventual husband. Centuries old, Polgara is one of the mightest sorcerers in The Belgariad’s quasi-medieval setting. Durnik, on the other hand, is a mortal blacksmith known for his sobriety, humility, and stubborn work ethic. In other words: He’s the least magical person alive. As the story progresses and Durnik discovers Polgara’s true identity and the scope of her power, the two couldn’t seem like a less-likely couple. And Eddings doesn’t handle them as such. Or at least he doesn’t seem to; a few hundred pages later, when Polgara makes a monumental sacrifice to save Durnik’s life, her love for the plain blacksmith gushes forth, apparently out of nowhere—although Eddings has been carefully, quietly building up to it the whole time. As with every element of The Belgariad, there isn’t the slightest trace of originality to the relationship between Polgara and Durnik. But by never using force or contrivance (or maybe, by using just the right amount of force and contrivance), Eddings turns their unlikely yet inevitable hookup into one of the series’ most nourishing pieces of trope-meat.
Kenny Herzog
Have I mentioned my affection for Sex And The City? In previous AVQ&As? Maybe so, but I was down on love, or at least Carrie and Aidan’s. But any of us stubbornly independent workaholics or needy, well-intentioned schlubs can get behind Miranda and Steve. Opposites attracted, then repelled, then made a redheaded baby during an unplanned but fortuitous night of premium-cable passion. Sure, Steve’s role in the movie was limited to an apparent diarrhea seizure while he confesses to infidelity, and a later shot at making amends by meeting her halfway across a vulnerable footbridge. But their circuitous courtship, accidental conception, and eventual, unlikely stability after several seasons grounded a series about love whose relationships were often lost in the clouds. And hey, c’mon: It’s Steve!