When it comes to love stories, "The
English Patient" is usually held up as a classic romance like “Gone with
the Wind” or “Sleepless in Seattle.” But in truth, I found it to be tired, cliché
and boring. This may be due to the fact that I didn’t connect on an
emotional level with any of the characters. I found the Hungarian Count László de Almásy and
the Englishwoman Katharine Clifton to be vain, selfish, and unredeemable
characters, not noble or admirable in any way. And while some people would
counter that by saying that Scarlett O’Hara was similarly vain and selfish, Scarlett also had other redeeming qualities, such as her Southern pride, her intense love of Tara, her plantation, and her refusal to give in to the Yankee
invaders. The tired plot of “The English Patient”, which depicts an adulterous
affair between a self-serving Hungarian Count and a married Englishwoman,
lacks the requisite virtuousness to make me care about the characters and root
for them. Much of this, in my opinion, has to do with their lack of redeeming
qualities.
So, if quality of character is paramount in making your
audience care about your characters and love your story, does that mean you can extend this quality to stories
don’t fall under the typical romance label? The answer is yes. Over the years I have found that the characters I admire
most are honest, refreshing, natural, honorable, and in a word, HUMAN. The beauty
of a love story is the way it depicts admirable characters that are admirable
DESPITE their foibles and imperfections and maybe even BECAUSE of their foibles
and imperfections. Love is such an intrinsically human emotion that the more
imperfect a character is, the more we can root for him in his pursuit of a noble
and virtuous cause. Think: Don Quixote de la Mancha.
 |
| In my opinion, Don Quijote has more redeeming qualities than Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy. |
While there are many different
genres of love stories, from Western to Victorian to Regency to Contemporary to
Swashbuckling, they don’t necessarily have to be the old-fashioned "boy
meets girl" formula. A truly fabulous unorthodox love story can stand
out by breaking down this powerful human emotion called love in an entirely new
and refreshing way.
Here are some classic examples of
timeless love stories told in a unique fashion:
FINDING NEMO —a full-length cartoon
that is a kind of "love story" between a father and a son (anthropomorphized
as tropical fish). When the son is captured by fishermen, the father embarks
on an Odyssey to find him. An amazing story beautifully told with a sub-plot
involving a romance of sorts between the Daddy Fish and a Lady Fish who he
meets and befriends along the way. She is a quirky character with only
short-term memory, but they cling to each other despite their imperfections.
LIFE AND NOTHING BUT (La vie et rien
d'autre) —a French movie which explores an unacknowledged love between two
people brought together by the misery of war. A wealthy French widow of the
Great War is searching for her husband's body, dead or alive. The major
in charge of identifying the bodies is gruff and dispassionate, but in spite of
the tragedy and hopelessness surrounding them, feelings between them
emerge. Amidst the ruin and shambles that is the aftermath of WWI these two
disparate souls connect in a breathtakingly fresh and honest way.
EMMA’S SHADOW (Skyggen af Emma) —a
kind of an offbeat "love story" between a 10-year old Danish girl and
a sewer worker. When a young Danish girl is constantly ignored by her self-absorbed
parents, she cooks up a plot to concoct her own kidnapping and runs away. After
stumbling into a naïve sewer worker, she enlists his help by telling him a phony
story about her noble Russian origins, and the sewer worker comes to care about
her so much (and she for him when she sees how mistreated he is by everyone
around him) that he risks his freedom to help her escape the “Bolsheviks” that
are chasing her. In the end, she finds the love and caring that was so lacking
in her previous life.
CINEMA PARADISO —a love story of
sorts between an elderly projectionist and a fatherless young orphan. When
an Italian boy’s father fails to return from WWII, his mother is fraught with
anxiety about how to pay the bills. Seeing her anguish, the old theater projectionist
takes him on as an apprentice and a beautiful friendship ensues. Years later, after the boy grows
up and leaves his small village, he learns how much the
older man cared about him and wanted to see him happy.
DARK EYES —a love story between a
married Italian man and a married Russian woman who meet in a spa. The
Italian man has married above his station, rendering him useless and
purposeless in life. But when he meets a beautiful and almost helpless Russian
woman, he discovers his own latent courage that has been dormant inside of him
to win her love and give his life new meaning and purpose. The story ends with a
surprise twist that shows how important it is to seize chances when they are
presented.
BRAVE —a love story of sorts between
a young girl and her mother. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Brave depicts a
princess named Merida from the clan of Dunbroch who rebels against
her mother and her clan’s custom by refusing to marry any of the suitors
selected for her. After consulting a
witch for help, Merida accidentally transforms her mother into a bear and Merida
is distraught when she realizes how much she loves her mother and how close she
is to losing her if the spell becomes permanent.
Each
of these movies depicts characters that are offbeat and quirky, and display
abundant humanity in their respective quests. To me, that is the essence of a
love story. The characters do not have to be perfect, they don’t have to be
sanitized Hollywood stereotypes, they have to be real people who care deeply
about one another, so much so that it shakes their world—and
ours.