CHICK FLICKS: Serendipity

 

Serendipity

Serendipity

 

 

Sara believes in destiny.  Sara meets Jonathan.  Funny story, they both reached for the only pair of black gloves among the crammed holiday shoppers at Bloomingdale’s.  A third-party shopper grabs the gloves and he starts ad-libbing.  She responds quickly on her feet following his cue.  They part after having hot chocolate at Serendipity, her favorite place because of her faith in fate.  But Jon leaves his scarf behind; Sara also leaves her shopping bag.  They coincidentally meet again and so they spend a little time together.  It feels meant to be.  But as she gives her number to Jon, a gust of wind blows her paper away.  She thinks it’s a sign . . . for them not to join.  She gets an idea.  He writes her number on her $5 bill.  If that $5 bill gets back into her hands, she’ll call him . . . eventually.  He contests.  What about his number being out there?  She will write her number on a book, Love in the Time of Cholera.  Fate is in his hands to find her book at a used book store.  Will they find each other’s numbers and meet again?  Is there such thing as fate?  Well, in this case, Jonathan had one incredible night with Sara and won’t forget her that easily even after few years pass.  So you’ll find out as a viewer if they reunite after few years . . . when Sara has lost her faith in fate because . . . what happened with Jonathan.          

 

 

Jonathan’s (John Cusack) search for Sara (Kate Beckinsale) few years after their first meeting is called Manic Love.  This is when someone is “crazy-in-love,” which encompasses intense, all-consuming, possessive, and fluctuating between joy and despair.  The last scene in Jerry MaGuire where Jerry (Tom Cruise) dashes back to see his wife Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) upon realizing he could not share his glory or laugh about it with her shows manic love.  Most men love in the form of Erotic Love —romantic, sexual, irrational, and largely based on physical attraction.  Heaven Can Wait has a good example of erotic love between Joe Pendleton, the football player (Warren Beatty) whose life was accidentally taken away early and the lobbyist Ms. Logan (Julie Christie) who attest to the business of Joe’s new embodied form in a body of a billionaire:  an undeniable chemistry spurts between them.  Ms. Logan represents the town of the people who signed a petition against his building a refinery taking over their town.  For the women, it is a different experience in which how she hears him showing up in the movie as well.  Julie Christie says it best, “what did you say?” as she finds herself alone in the dark corridor of the empty stadium with his soul incarnated in another body of a football player Jarrett after he utters his familiar but comforting words, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”  Even though Joe forgot all about his previous identity, his soul could not help be drawn to the same woman.  It was meant to be because the chemistry was there.  In the movie Serendipity, Jonathan’s fiancée is physically attractive and there is nothing wrong with her.  He just had that extra chemistry with Sara. 

 

Men and women love differently.  Women are more concerned with the men’s good earnings capacity.  Some women choose Pragmatic Love which entails rational, practical, and fair exchange between 2 carefully matched partners.  Pragmatic love is found in ethnic groups whose arranged marriages connect 2 families together as well as two business partners.  Generally, physical attraction is more important to men than women.

 

 

Seven typology of love is rooted all the way back to Greek mythology:  Erotic, Manic, Ludic, Pragmatic, Storgic, and Agapic.    

 

Clueless

As Good As It Gets

Storgic love can be the lasting, stable love between 2 companions who started out as friends.  Carol (Helen Hunt), a waitress who tends to Melvin (Jack Nicholson) at breakfast regularly has this in As Good As It Gets.  Harry met Sally (Meg Ryan) as friends for years until they finally realized into a couple in When Harry Met Sally.  Clueless based on Jane Austen’s Emma has Cher (Alicia Silverstone) find love with her step-brother Josh (Paul Rudd) by the concluding story of the movie.  You’d normally find this with old, married couples.  Agapic love is altruistic where one person loves another faithfully; this is the most self-sacrificing of all the loves.  Ludic love is self-serving, egoistic where only 1 of you is emotionally involved while the other is not.  Vicomte de Valmont  (John Malkovich) of Dangerous Liaison is a player whose quest for conquering women equate to ludic love, but he is challenged to seduce the one woman who is virtuous and loyal, Cecile de Volanges (Michelle Pfeiffer); thus their liaison quickly turns dangerous. 

Dangerous Liaisons

Closer

Find more complex liaisons in the movie Closer where 4 strangers come crashing down on each other in twisted turns.  Alice (Natalie Portman) who instantly falls for a stranger Dan (Jude Law) leaves her relationship with him after theirs become unequivocally imbalanced.  Larry (Clive Owen), the doctor has a casual encounter with Alice who is now a stripper after finding out his Anna’s (Julia Roberts) cheating on him with Dan.  Did Larry have revenge sex with Alice to get back at him?  Dan, the obituary writer, seeks Alice again but his unlicked masculinity and prickly immaturity serves as hindrance to any salvaging of their relationship.  “I would have loved you,” Alice says to Dan at the concluding story line, but she questions if his love exists at all—she can’t see it or hear it.  Dan slaps Alice completely ending it for her.  Alice has her own shares of rules which Dan has violated.  Alice tells Dan, “I don’t love you anymore.”  There, her feelings suddenly have sunken down to a big dip to nullity.  Dan walks down the streets to find a small public park with Alice’s name on one of its tombs implying Alice’s false identity was taken randomly from a deceased stranger whom she must have sighted from the conspicuous engraved letters above its tomb—a hero who saved other’s lives.  Alice just wanted to live the life of somebody else’s for a brief span in time . . .  but she wanted to be that person with Dan.  Too bad Dan ruined it.  At the end of the movie, Alice struts down the streets of New York alone as her serpentine self who draws turning heads of men in the streets explicitly implying her whole world which remains in front of her.                 

  

 

Serendipity Kate Beckinsale as Sara and John Cusack as Jonathan

Chance on a Windfall

 

Seguilla (elongated):      7-5-7-5-5-7-5-7-5-5-7-5

a,b,c,a,b,c,d,b,c,d,c,e

 

 

Will you cast the same colors?

Or deem my mind wild?

If our chance turns out faithful,

And the moons and stars,

Align and focalize,

Surely ours were to windfall,

Find me to finish,

Swear by so I can rely,

That fate will befall,

Hairbreadth and within reach,

Miss, I’d turn faithless, wary,

Show ours to be true.

Seven Minutes in Heaven (1985)

Seven Minutes in Heaven

 Triolet:   A,B,a,A,a,b,A,B

 

Spend seven minutes in heaven,

Running through free play, full swing,

When it’s just us well-wishers like first cousins,

Spend seven minutes in heaven,

Setting loose and free as it happens,

I do what I like to feel at home without leavings,

Spend seven minutes in heaven,

Running through free play, full swing.