Amour

A lot of what I learned about love I learned from the movies.  This made for unnaturally high expectations.  My twenties were a perpetual quest for the lightening bolt of drama and passion.  Except that I shied away from confrontation.  The template in my head involved overcoming crazy odds, battling gridlock traffic, chasing ‘the one’ down the street and then kissing in the rain.  Musical serenades were bonus.  I eventually began to suspect that the Hollywood endings were leading me astray.  What happens after the big declarations of love and the screen fades to black?

Personally I don’t think Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak make a great go of it.  She can’t deal with his solitary nature when he’s writing so she gets a job at Tiffany’s but there’s an awkward moment when an ex gentleman friend comes in with his wife.  Eventually Holly gets bored staying in with Paul and the cat every night and starts to party with her old crowd.  They both start drinking heavily.  He manages to get help and start going to meetings but she goes the Loss of Roses path.

I’ve seen a lot of examples of what happens when the endorphin rush subsides.  Sometimes the fizzle happens before things go too far and we just carry on with our separate quests.  But I’ve also got a healthy number of ‘just friends’ males in my world.  What I don’t have is a template for after the ‘happily ever after’.

And then I saw Michael Haneke’s Amour.  This is ‘happily ever after’ in action.  This is a study in ’til death do us part.  Literally.  Amour is what love looks like after the heady endorphin overdose of the ‘honeymoon’ phase.

Love is making meals for your lover and cutting up their food, because they can’t.  Every day.   When the day comes when they can’t eat solid food, love is making that meal and pureeing the shit out of it and then lovingly feeding it to them like a baby.  Love is recognizing the indignity of it all and knowing it means something that it’s you and not a paid professional doing it.  Love is helping with the indignities of old age because you’re right there and the tables could easily be turned.  This is what enduring love is.  Needless to say  I think this is a beautiful movie, skillfully and masterfully executed.  Ok, I’ve said it.

I am not in the habit of meeting men and imagining them needing their ass wiped.  I’ve never wondered about one day spoon-feeding a boyfriend, even when things were going well.  These are hard images and I’m not trying to visualize them.  But I’m drawn to what they symbolize; the commitment, the constancy, the faith and trust that someone has completely got my back.  My Holly Golightly days are behind me but after my crash course with Professor Haneke I’m inspired by a new ideal.