NETWORK (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
What makes Network, a visionary film about the drift of the media, a masterpiece to stop believing in romanticism? Well, he has an unforgettable couple conversation because of how stark, honest, and civilized. One of those is when he (a tall William Holden) tells his wife (Beatrice Straight) that he is having an affair with an ambitious young woman (Faye Dunaway). A classic with phrases as crude as: "I don't know what I feel, but I am thankful that I feel something." And by the way, it can be seen how Lumet predicted more than four decades ago all the bad things that were to come. And not only in love.
HEARTBURN (Mike Nichols, 1986)
That Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Carnal Knowledge, Closer) did not leave a puppet with a head is a well-known thing. But that of Heartburn (here baptized with the terrible and premonitory The cake is over) is another dimension in this to get rid of romantic love once and for all. Nichols picks up the scalpel and dissects all the subterranean violence hidden in the seemingly inescapable rituals of human mating. Namely: get married, buy a house, have children, and blindly and stupidly persist in the attempt. Or how iron monogamy can destroy everything because as he well tells the protagonist (Meryl Streep) her mother: “There is nothing you can do. You are monogamous. You married a swan." The swan is Jack Nicholson. As if that were not enough, the script is by Nora Ephron, the main theme by Carly Simon and a very young Kevin Spacey comes out.
THE COLLECTOR (William Wyler, 1965)
Freddie Clegg, a gray bank employee, wins the lottery and has no better idea than to kidnap Miranda Gray (Samantha Eggar), a young art student he has been attracted to for a long time. From there begins a tense and harrowing psychological thriller. But is Freddie Clegg (Terence Stamp) a disturbed person who has simply fallen in love or can one really end up committing atrocities to get that tongue twister consisting of the loved object loving us as we want him to love us? Because, although the end of the film points in one direction, it may not be necessary to go to Stamp's extremes for that thing called love to govern us and translate into obsession and possession.
A WOMAN FOR TWO (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933)
An independent woman (Miriam Hopkins) meets two men (Gary Cooper and Frederich March) and begins a relationship with both of them. No prejudices, no morals. Unable to make up her mind, she brings it up to both of them. And, between the three of them, they decide that a three-way relationship is the solution. If Lubitsch was able to tell a polyamory story in 1933, do we really have to continue in 2020 around romantic love?
LOBSTER (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
The fear of being alone. Or the fear of being with someone. Or the schizophrenia of the sentimental times in which we have had to live. Because is the couple the least bad of emotional organizations? Or, on the contrary, do we have to screw up definitively and once and for all in conventional love? Lanthimos, as always, put his finger on the sore.
LOVE EXPOSURE (Zion Sono, 2008)
Or all the calamities that can befall you when you expose yourself to love and pursue it in a frenzy. From inventing a false identity to joining a sect or ending up completely deranged. Four hours of glorious and hilarious delirium after which you'd rather drink a glass of hemlock than embark on a passionate romance.
