500 Days of Summer (2009) – on rental. Romantic comedies are a dime a dozen these days, and while the quality of the spoken dialog and chemistry between leads do continue to vary from film to film, more often than not many films of this genre don’t see much range in terms of their stories, the general plot arc of meeting to conflict to reconciliation, nor the atypical outcome at film’s end.
I guess that’s why I really enjoy romantic comedies that are either offbeat or even just a little out of the norm. There’s the pair of real time-esque comedies Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and now this: 500 Days of Summer. The film starts off with a startling voice over – that this is not a love story, though that in itself is a misrepresentation: 500 Days is a love story, just not a conventional one.
The compact 95 minute film tells of a relationship between Tom, a card writer who dreams of being an architect and who begins the film believing in the power of love and fate; and his co-worker, Summer, who doesn’t believe in either. By the film’s end, both persons’ perspectives would have changed, though their individual journeys to this vary in efficacy: it works for Tom, didn’t work for me in Summer’s case.
The film is presented in nonlinear narrative fashion. In any other circumstance, the narrative might have caused audiences getting madly disoriented as the film jumps between points in the timeline. To the film’s credit, these timeline points are presented through a numerical measure of how many days Tom and Summer are in in their relationship. Some of the funniest bits are the juxtapositions between past and present. For instance, in one scene you see the relationship at a high point, and a second later, you see an identical scene but only 100 days later where the relationship is at its low point.
Character pair engagement, chemistry and general likability in romantic leads are of great importance in films of this type. Tom and Summer are played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, not exactly unknowns but so over-exposed in films of this genre either like Jennifer Aniston is these days. You’ll empathize with Levitt’s Hansen – he’s the average guy in a job that keeps him occupied and puts food on the table but he has secret dreams.
But it’s Deschanel’s Summer that left me with an impression: she’s unconventional, refreshing despite her pessimistic attitudes towards love, but constantly still surprises with her actions despite that. It’s telling that Zooey Deschanel is an attractive actress in person, but her costumes and weird 1960s hairdo hides that and lets her facial features takes over the visual aspects of her representation.
It’s also refreshing to see a comedy that doesn’t rely on adult gimmicks to relate a story point, like in the recent but really disappointing The Ugly Truth. In this sense, 500 Days doesn’t feel false but exactly what relationships are like.
We watched the film the other evening with Matt, and it gets Ling’s approval.
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