Give love a chance.
What do love and romance have to do with anything? Can you recall the last time you saw a major motion picture where two people fell in love before they physically christened their relationship?
Okay, so you named a few, but you'll agree it happens oh rarely, right? Well, the absolute charm of director Alejandro Agresti's film The Lake House (besides watching Keanu Reeves try to "seriously" act) is the beauty of two people just getting to know one another. In this case, the communication vehicle is love letters.
It's such a fresh departure from the relationship gunk Hollywood swills out to expecting audiences.
Usually today's quixotic film formula involves two attractive people who see each other (in the office, on the street, at a fundraiser to relieve suffering). Of course her top comes off (just because all or some part of a naked female must be shown in most movies) and after about 10 movie minutes of knowing each other they are carnally one. It is only after sex that each character learns the name of the other bedfellow. Next, the pair becomes more familiar with one another (with more sex, pointing guns, sometimes there is dialogue, usually antagonistic banter coupled with drinking, driving, hitting, drugs), and then each member of the strained couple wonders privately how he/she ever could have slept with the other person. The end.
The Lake House offers old-fashioned movie love. A successful doctor (Sandra Bullock) begins corresponding via notes she leaves in the mailbox with a man (Reeves) who rents the same property she once occupied two years previous. As the film progresses we come to learn the significance of the hauntingly beautiful home on the lake, and how the lives of Dr. Kate Forester and architect Alex Wyler weave a complex yet simple tale of love and longing. Never mind that the plot is set in a truly incomprehensible time warp, the most crucial factor is that both professionals are lonely.
Loneliness is a real and epidemic problem in America. It is so prevalent and powerful that current research has linked loneliness to disease and shortened life spans.
Thus it is with great pleasure that we watch our two main characters fill their forlorn hearts with true love. Adoration which was created by old fashioned communication and learning about one another's lives, experiences, feelings and aspirations. As the tale is told, the time differential (he is writing from the year 2004 and she in 2006 with most of the rest of us) is scarcely addressed. And we dare not care. It was romantic. Beautiful.
Unfortunately, moviegoers are having none of it. The film hasn't done well at the box office, and I can only attribute that to a lack of hedonism on the part of its characters. I admit the speculation is a reach, but this is the second, wholesome, loving, touching, "feel good" film that has fallen by the way side within the last few months. The other film, Akeelah and the Bee, is admittedly a different genre, but a great film nonetheless, that didn't meet anyone's lucrative box office expectations.
What is going on? What am I missing? What is wrong with good, clean and wholesome love that leaves the fleshy particulars off of the big screen? Is there no one left who can appreciate the following left out of a film: cursing, violence, nudity and vile behavior (okay there is a little "fighting over the girl" boyfriend tension, but it is gentle by most cinematic standards)?
I encourage the viewing of The Lake House, a really great film that probably won't be in the theatres when this article connects with your eyes. But here is wishing that the DVD release of this film will give respectable "love and romance" a second chance.
Reach the reporter at jamise.liddell@asu.edu.
