«500 days together»: the retrospective of an enduring romance

Cinema Wednesdays - Special edition: Love in the movies - Lauriane Pipoz

2009 sees the release of one of the world's most brilliant love films. Except it's not about a love story. For 95 minutes, 500 days together plays with the codes of the romantic film to present us with a unique story. Unique, really? No, Marc Webb is telling us about a relationship we've heard about many times before. It's about a man who meets a woman. And the woman behaves like a man. Analysis of a progressive tale I'll soon have watched five hundred times.

Farewell, Bridget Jones! The recipe for the worldwide romantic success of the early 2000s has been spiced up in the years since. The roles are now swapped. The naïve blonde slaughtered by manipulative men has given way to the romantic man. To prove my point, consider the excellent series How I Met Your Mother (2005). Same ingredients, same success: a man who believes in love is confronted by a woman who refuses it. A New York architect who succeeds in designing skylines but unable to build the story he dreams of.

Incomprehensible public enthusiasm? Wrong. The directors of these two equally critically acclaimed masterpieces have simply taken the temperature of their environment. A world in which women thirsting for independence seek to find their place in a ruthless professional environment. Was it logical to continue showing films on a Disney line where an immobile princess waits patiently for a strong prince to come to her rescue, when, in practice, immobility is now synonymous with having one's place snatched away while on maternity leave?

Jackpot

It's a brilliant idea: women and men alike can identify with these new fairy tales. Tom, our anti-hero, is a gentle dreamer. Caught up in his own thoughts, he finds it hard to shake himself out of it and put it into practice. Summer, on the other hand, is pragmatic. Determined. She's the one who's going to take the reins of this encounter. But between these two, it could hardly go well.

«- We've got to stop seeing each other like this. It shouldn't surprise you so much, we've been getting along like Sid and Nancy for months.
- Summer, Sid stabbed Nancy seven times with a kitchen knife. We don't always agree on everything, but to compare me to Sid... well, frankly...
- No, it's me Sid!
- Oh. So I'm Nancy.
- Tom, don't go, you're still my best friend!»

It is this failure of love that is recounted in 500 days. We discover the turmoil of this non-history in the form of a retrospective presented in no particular order. In the style of a documentary, we are introduced to Summer, freshly arrived in Tom's company. I don't know about you, but I'm damn sensitive to the «Summer effect»: Zooey Deschanel and her big blue eyes are hypnotic in the role of the delightfully weird girl next door. She couldn't care less about being the center of male attention. The lesson is clear: you don't need the male gaze to build yourself up.

Carnival reversal

All this contrasts, of course, with Tom. The main character is defined by his desire to meet «the one». A characteristic explained by his early exposure to pop-culture and which is, of course, normally attributed to the female gender. This inversion is thus assumed in this independent film: of dates, of genders, but also of ages. Tom's little sister (Chloë Grace Moretz, who will be seen again in Greta), twelve years old, is called in to solve her brother's problems. The only meaning of this is that common sense has no age limit, and it adds an invigorating dose of absurdity by forcing the issue. With a small, avant-garde mention of mansplaining (a guy explaining to a woman what she already knows):

«- What do you know about rules, you, anyway?
- More than you, Tom.»

Read also: «Greta»: a horror, but not in a good way

These reversals are at the heart of 500 days together because they're present throughout the film. But also because they convey the spirit of the film: it's a comedy. And what a success it is! In fact, that's the film's main achievement: it carries a message, but the viewer doesn't feel it at any point. Which makes it all the more powerful. We're told that men believe in love just as much as women. And finally, that there's no point in trying to build a relationship with someone who doesn't want to.

«Color my life with the chaos of trouble»

Conservative thinking has it that it's women who are desperate to «tie the knot» around these men's necks. This inversion of the expectations traditionally attributed to men and women - the former seeking freedom, the latter dreaming of commitment - suggests that, in the end, men face the same difficulties: regardless of our sex, the problem is the same. 500 days together is not the only film to tackle this very contemporary issue. I'm thinking, for example, of the great popular success Sex friends (2011), starring Nathalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, features the same plot with a refreshing dose of humor. But without the same sparkle.

So, what is the added value of our work? Undoubtedly its choice of staging in the form of a disorganized retrospective. This gives the film a fast-paced feel that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. The retro photography, with its many zooms and black-and-white passages, is also a tribute to the sixties and eighties. From the protagonists' style of dress to their love of old movies, and above all their shared passion for music: the presence of Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths and Hall & Oates in the background makes me think that the musical choices in this feature film are in the best possible taste. This music is also frequently brought to the fore, as the characters are defined by their musical tastes and owe their first contact to The Smiths.

Summer and Tom's tastes belong to a bygone century. But their attitudes to love and their characters, whether fighting or dreaming, are not those traditionally attributed to their gender by the Disney clichés of the 20th century.^th century. Are we to understand that Summer's amorous attitude, which may seem very masculine - «Your girl, but she's a guy!» says Tom's friend in amazement - is not due to a change in 21st century mores?^th century, but was already present in the last? Perhaps these clichés have nothing to do with modernity, but have always been Disney prejudices. And we simply have to forget about them. If we were to focus on one essential point, well underlined in the film, it would be this: let's not give up on the idea of love, all of us. It still has many years ahead of it.

Write to the author: lauriane.pipoz@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Fox Searchlight Pictures