500 Days of Summer is in cinemas from September 4th
Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. It’s not your conventional romantic comedy but it’s a story about love that will strike a chord with everyone.
500 Days of Summer is an anatomy of a romance; part autobiography and part fantasy. The idea for the film was sparked by two young screenwriters – one recovering from a badly bruised heart, the other in a long-term relationship – reminiscing over romances that could have been, that maybe should have been, but for some reason just weren’t. So how, wondered writers Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, does a young romantic survive such a reality?
Enter Tom; sensitive, thoughtful and broken-hearted, who replays his relationship with Summer over and over in his mind trying to pin-point exactly where the relationship broke down, or in his words; ‘for the first sign of trouble’.
Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, still believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically-destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel, doesn’t at all – but that doesn’t stop him going after her again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel play Tom and Summer
The film winds backwards and forwards reliving their on-again, off-again, sometimes blissful, often tumultuous dalliance. It covers the whole dizzying territory from infatuation, dating and sex to separation, recrimination and redemption, in a whirl of time jumps, split screens, karaoke numbers and cinematic verve which all add up to a kaleidoscopic portrait of why and how we still struggle so hard to make sense of love.
Suddenly Tom is not just in love with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman, but with the very idea of Summer and the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world.
As we watch him relive his relationship, Tom gains perspective and learns something about himself and love. He realizes he’s someone in love with the idea of love, and that’s why his story becomes a very hopeful one, because he ends up understanding something about the true nature of love.
500 Days of Summer is in cinemas September 4th. Watch the trailer below and if you go and see it, leave us a comment and tell us what you thought.
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on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Film Reviews.
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