Here's Looking at You, Kid!
In her Valentine’s Day lecture, film and writer journalist Basje Boer looks at the way love is portrayed in films.
Ways to show something as intangible as being in love include having the characters gaze endlessly at one another, like in PORTRAIT DE LA JEUNE FILLE EN FEU, or replacing sex by dance, like in the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Boer also looks at the symbolism of love in film. Aren’t some films really about something else entirely, like self-fulfilment in THE BREAKFAST CLUB or patriarchal dominance in REBECCA? And how do films actually influence the way we see love? People who watch too many romantic films, like AMÉLIE, LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG or BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, might start to believe they’re living in a fairy-tale themselves. But is that actually so bad?