Film & Book Reviews for a Cozy Evening at Home By Rodelinde Albrecht
S
ome people love easily, readily, joyfully; some need to learn. Literature and film are filled with stories of both. Today my theme is Learning Love. I’m going to recommend three films and a book that are all, in their different ways, about people to whom love does not come naturally. In Lars and the Real Girl (2007), a young man who is not just painfully but morbidly shy falls in love with the life-size, anatomically correct silicone sex doll he has innocently purchased via the internet. His brother and sister-in-law and his small Midwest community of friends love Lars and agree among themselves to accept Bianca as his girlfriend. They’ve been paying attention to their preacher’s words: “In all this world, there is only one law . . . Love one another.” Lars’s physician explains to his family that his delusion will end “when he doesn’t need it anymore.” Netflix calls this film a dark comedy; I would call it a darkly shining one. Mostly Martha (2002) is the story of a fanatically dedicated chef whose work absorbs all of her time, energy, and emotion until she unexpectedly becomes responsible for the care of her niece, Lina. As Martha comes to understand and love this precocious and moody young girl, she begins to live for the moment, not just in it. Then she meets Mario. Her boss, the restaurant owner, has hired him to cover for Martha when her schedule falls apart. Martha sees him as a potential rival. But the unfazed Mario, a spontaneous, warm, sensitive Italian – in short, Martha’s polar opposite – knows a thing or two about how to love and is prepared to teach her.
Sometimes it’s not the title character who needs to learn love. Despite her mental handicap, Carla Tate knows how to love. In fact, she says, she knows nothing else but she does know how to love. She’s The Other Sister (1999). The person who really needs to learn love – in the deepest sense of understanding and accepting – is her mother, an expert in the art of denial. Usually it is the parent who teaches the child. Here, in her own quirky way, Carla teaches her mother how simple love can be. This is one of those movies that leave you torn between laughter and tears of bliss at the over-the-top ending. The Bachelor’s Cat: A Love Story, by L.F. Hoffman (1997), is a perfect bonbon of a book: small and sweet . . . and tremendously satisfying. The bachelor has an on-again, off-again high-voltage relationship with his slender, athletic girlfriend, who is forever on the lookout for something better. During one of their off times, he finds and adopts a tiny kitten. They become fast friends and playmates. Increasingly, he asks himself, “Why can’t a woman be more like a cat?” And then he meets the woman. She’s chubby, not at all his type. But she’s complicated and interesting and funny. Being with her is a bit like being with the cat. We never learn the names of the bachelor, the girlfriend, or the woman. The cat is called Frankie. Clearly she is the protagonist. ~ Rodelinde Albrecht is the Director of Concerned Singles, an online service that, for more that 25 years, has brought together socially conscious, progressive singles who care about social justice, race and gender equity, the environment, and personal growth. www.ConcernedSingles.com. See ad on page 27.
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december 2010
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