I know there are women out there who are also taking their second chance--starting over--going back to school, starting a new career or at least a new phase in their life, getting married for the first, second, or third time.
Three Movies For Valentine's Day~
By Dawn G. Prince
Return To Me~
Asweet, little, romantic comedy. David Duchovny stars as Bob, a successful contractor who loses his zoologist wife Elizabeth. Gracie, played by Minnie Driver is a very sick girl awaiting a heart transplant. Shy, lacking confidence and sheltered, Gracie covers up the chest scars from her heart operation. Grieving from the sudden lost of his wife, Bob covers up his pain by throwing himself into work.
A year later, the two of them are unknowingly brought together when Bob goes on a blind date at O’Reilly’s, the Irish/Italian restaurant where she works with her protective grandfather, uncle and best friend. There's an instant, unexplainable connection between the two that makes Bob ask if they've met before.
There is a sweetness that bubbles up as we see the thirty-something Bob and Gracie tackle dating. They are like shy, fumbling teenagers who must learn to overcome their fears and trust in each other. There is also familiar ground about fixating on our flaws, so much so that we can let it rob us of the opportunity of living wholly.
Adding to the charm of this movie is Gracie's family and friends, including the grandfather played by Caroll O'Connor, who
flit around the restaurant like interfering, match-making old ladies. Throw in the romantic, old music of crooners like Dean Martin and the tone of this movie is like a simmering pot of hearty soup that warms your heart.
The movie moves along with a lightness that is infectious and some very funny scences, but when the truth of their connection comes out, things go awry.
Return to Me has an innocence and charm that's missing from a lot of today's movies. This movie is life-affirming in that it shows us where love can take us if we open our hearts to it and not allow it to pass us by because we're afraid or insecure. Even though from the begining you know the route the movie is going to take, we root for Bob and Gracie because sometimes, a familiar sure-thing is all that's needed to renew our hope in love and life.
The Love Letter
L
oblolly By The Sea. Doesn't that sound like a quaint place to live? It's a quiet, coastal New England village, setting for the movie, The Love Letter, starring Kate Capshaw as Helen, a 42-year-old divorced mother who's emotionally closed off. Her emotional outlet is jogging and on her daily runs, she meets a lot of the colorful, town folks.
Helen MacFarquhar owns a lovely, little book store where there is Johnny and Jennifer, both 20-year-old college students and bookstore clerks, who are there for the summer, and there is Ellen Degeneres as Janet, a wise-cracking and seemingly sex loving store manager. In the midst of this of all this, as with all small towns, people come and go from the bookstore, including fireman George played by Tom Selleck. George has been in love with Helen for years but ended up married and divorced from another woman.
In the midst of their ordinary lives, Helen finds an anonymous, passionate and sensual love letter that she's come to believe that young Johnny has sent to her. Johnny is interested in the twice his age Helen who hasn't a clue what she's doing or what she wants. To add to the triangles, freckled, feminist Julie has a crush on Johnny.
Throughout the movie the love letter falls into several hands, including Janet and the burly town cop, with each receipient thinking that it was meant for them by someone they're infatuated with...and what transpires is very French-cinema like in this small but surprisingly uplifting movie about yearning and opening your heart to love. The story unveils one sweet surprise after another as the letter comes full circle. For me this is a little gem of a movie that would be a good choice to curl with by yourself or with a loved one.
Although the characters are a little underused and under-developed, I chalk it up to the french-style slowness or the quaintness of a laidback New England village, where not much really happens. Adapted from the Cathleen Schine's novel, you'll like it if you are a fan of slow, charming, sleepy romances and if you are looking for your heroine to be slightly neurotic, mature and still sexy after forty.
Under The Tuscan Sun
U
nder The Tuscan Sun is one of those finding yourself romance that seduces you with its oldworld, sumptuous backdrop of Tuscany, Italy and brewing with colorful characters. Roughly based on writer Frances Mayes travels, Diane Lane plays Frances, a New York writer whose life is devastated by the discovery of a cheating husband. Her girlfriend gives her a ticket to Italy, telling her that she won't be hit on by anyone as Frances wants to be alone with her broken heart.
Once there, she is drawn to this old villa that she buys impulsively and sets about fixing up with the help of some lovable, Polish workers who don't speak English or Italian. She meets an over the top Katherine, who's met Frederico Fellini once and spends the entire movie
vamping and sauntering about and looking every bit the flamboyant movie diva from Fellini's movies in her huge hats and larger than life personna. Katherine is a free spirit who tells Frances that she needs to live again.
And what would a summer in Italy be without romance with an Italian lover who talks with de accent and looks like he's out of a romance novel. (He's younger than the forty-something Frances, by the way.) We see Frances' slow liberation and coming to life again. After a night of wild, passionate love making, Frances jumps up and down on the bed, screaming, "Yes. Yes. I've still got it."
Despite going to Tuscany to be alone, in the end Frances adopts the peole around her as she discovers that she doesn't want to be alone, and that romance comes in the most unexpected way. Much of the movie is spent with workers in and out of the house as the remodelling takes place. Just as the house is transformed,
we see Frances go from the broken-hearted and lonely to a heroine who realizes that she deserves to be happy and that one bad romance shouldnt take the joy out of living.
Wanna Read Reviews on these Movies? Check out these sites
Internet Movie Data Base
rottentomatoes.com
Movies.com
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