Posted on February 11, 2017
Below are my classics–tried and true– for celebrating Valentine’s Day, romantic as much for their settings as for their stories. While living abroad since 2014 I’ve seen most of them broadcast repeatedly in English on television stations in Morocco and the Dominican Republic. Valentine’s Day Movie Marathons are as popular in these two countries—one Catholic, the other Muslim– as they are in the US. It seems Cupid, son of Venus born on Mt. Olympus in Greece, is a global citizen and the universal language is love.
Nominated for 4 Academy Awards, this movie is hands-down my #1 V Day choice—this year more than ever—with its redemptive message that even the most polarised can unite with grace, real relationship, and love. The film is adapted from the novel written by Joanne Harris. Interviewing the author, born to a British father and French mother, who was once an English teacher and who lives in Yorkshire, Bronte country, was a thrill for me. See it here.
The film is delicious: a dream cast including Judi Dench, Juliette Binoche, and Johnny Depp; sensual cinematography focused on the making of chocolate in a French hillside village in the 1950s; magical realism from Latin American culture; and a challenge to change and choose love over legalism for the sake of family, friends, and community.
Movie lovers and house hunters, for more on the locations where Chocolat and Under the Tuscan Sun (below) were filmed, check out Julia Sweeten’s blog, Hooked on Houses.
I wonder, do we all know where we belong? And if we do, in our hearts, why do we so often do nothing about it? There must be more to this life, a purpose for us all, a place to belong. You were my home. I knew from the moment I met you, that night, so many years ago.
Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen star in a romance fueled with chemistry of a couple committed to a cause greater than themselves. It’s the story of a woman who leaves her London home for Ethiopia when made aware of the needs there in a refugee camp. Forever changed by what she sees and who she meets, she supports the ones she loves from home and on trips to Cambodia and Chechnya. The film is dedicated to relief workers and victims of war and persecution—another timely choice. Jolie adopted her son, Maddox, while in Cambodia during filming. She brought to the part experience working as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.
Inspired by the movie, I tried to rock the heroine’s hat on my trip to Russia.
As art, this one ties with Chocolat and Life is Beautiful for my three Favorite Films of All Time. When I first saw it before the Academy Award nominations, I knew it would sweep the Oscars. Here’s why. I long to go to India, but in the meantime, I take trips there in my apartment by dancing to the bonus material at the end.
Also starring Dev Patel and Judi Dench, this film made me cry every time I watched it until I moved abroad because it made me long to try on the expat life. Having done so, I’ve quoted it often on this blog because I now know living outside your home country is what Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Love Warrior, calls a “brutifal” (brutal and beautiful experience). I’ll be forever grateful for this movie moving me to live in Marrakesh for two years. The plot has more than one love story, but the greatest one is making choices in life and learning to love them.
So anyone who has known me for awhile knows the influence this film had on me and other women who have moved abroad. The first night after arriving in Morocco, I unwrapped this DVD (one of 5 in my “survival pack”) and watched it for the twentieth time. I needed to remember that things probably would not go as I planned but love always prevails even if it comes in a package we never expected. So if you are lonely–in a relationship or without one–watch this and please go to my Instagram to get inspired to decorate your own life.
Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise, filmed in 1995, is the story of a young couple who meet in Vienna the night before she must return home to Paris and he to the US.
Before Sunset, the sequel, was filmed in 2004 when the couple meets in the City of Lights, followed by Before Midnight released in 2013 and set in Greece. For anyone who has or is open to finding love abroad or cross-cultural relationships; loves character-driven, smart dialogue or backdrops in the most beautiful places on earth; or appreciates soundtracks you’ll want to download and listen to forever…this is binge-worthy.
I admit that until last week I had never finished this film. Although the second half moves faster that the first, the whole is an epic love story and worth the time investment. At first Colonial Kenya sent me to Victoria magazine again—my favorite publication in a past life now online– as I saw the comfort china and crystal brought to the main character so far from home. But better, it causes us to question anew the values of that period and our own. I was moved to download the book on Kindle and read the memoir from which it was taken. I didn’t need more reason to do a safari since it already tops my Bucket List, but examining the relationship of the characters played by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford is a Cinema Bucket List must-do.
This one would have been farther up the list a few years ago (I kept the DVD close and watched it often) based on the fiery passion between the characters played by Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. Maybe actually riding a camel across the Sahara Desert in scorching heat and not looking like Katherine whose scarves always blew beautifully behind her in the breeze did it. Maybe I’m just getting older, wiser, and suspicious of that much intensity because in real life it too often turns to burn (no pun intended). Still, I love the film—especially the backdrops of the desert, Cairo, and Italy where Juliette Binoche teamed again with Fiennes years after they played Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, based on my favorite romantic novel of all time. My fav stop on my trip to Tuscany last year was seeing the church below featured in the film. In this case, reality was as beautiful as fiction.
What are your go-to romantic movies? Please tell us in the comments below. Happy Valentine’s Day!
You might also want to check out my Weekend Escape series to inspire travel and connection.
Posted on February 8, 2009
Yesterday I posted 3 of my favorite love poems. I invited guys to use them or write their own for their girls for Valentine’s Day. My friend, Jesse, posted a comment that included one of his favorite poems. I like it so much I want to share it with you here. Please send your favorite love poem (penned by you or by a favorite author) by way of a Comment on this blog. If you include your permission, I may post it here. Thanks again, Jesse, for this poem by Frank O’Hara!
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastain, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the “Polish Rider” occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the “Nude Descending a Staircase” or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
And another added by me from e. e. cummings:
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Posted on February 5, 2009
As I said in Part One yesterday, 2007 I had a new plan and a new attitude for surviving Valentine’s Day.
When I was married, it never occurred to me how much I needed women in my life. I was too buried beneath diapers to change, birthday parties to plan, coupons to clip, papers to grade, and a house to clean. My husband and children were my center. Anyway, all my girlfriends had also been body snatched, living for the men and kids in their orbits as well.
But when my world was thrown off course by the end of my sixteen-year marriage, my worldview was shaken. Despite –-no, because of—a lot of pain, I learned to reorganize my priorities. With the help of some wise, older women who helped me start over, I began to take care of myself so I could better care for my children.
I freed myself from the “shoulds”that said before I could play with my children, exercise, or see friends, I “should”… have a straight house, an organized desk, and an empty briefcase. But the one should I couldn’t shake was that to be totally happy I needed to be loved by the right man. While I’d refused to settle for dating just for dating’s sake and while I enjoyed time alone, I still believed a significant other was required to navigate Valentine’s Day.
Christmas can be filled with family gatherings, office parties, even Rudolph and Bing, but Valentine’s Day is for couples. And while kissing is part of New Year’s Eve, friends celebrate in droves whether at parties, bars, or Times Square. There’s something painfully exclusive about Valentine’s– tables for two. Having a soulmate is the sole focus.
Previously, if a friend had told me there’s anything better than romance and chocolate on Valentine’s Day, I would have thought her to be lying, denying, or just sadly settling. If she then really pressed her luck and told me there’s something better than spending Valentine’s Day with The One, I’d have told her to stop worrying. Though I am pathetically passionate which makes the weeks leading up to mid February painfully poignant, I really didn’t need her to go on Suicide Watch.
Then again, Homicide Watch might have been a good idea. Waiting on Cupid had become Waiting for Godot.. I really wanted to take a hit out on the little sucker for directing my dating life as absurdist comedy as I watched and waited for a leading man over a decade. He knew I wanted nothing more than to be Heathcliff’s Catherine…Johnny’s June…McDreamy’s Merdith… or Harry’s Sally. In fact, for the girl who fell in love with Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights as a high school senior, anything short of finding my soulmate who would proclaim, “I am Cindy!” seemed to be settling. But not settling meant I had to be patient. And again, instead of focusing on what I lacked, it was time to focus on what I had.
And that’s when I thought of Chocolat—not just because I love Juliette Binoche and all things chocolate. Not just because I adore Johnny Depp as Roux more than any other part he has ever played. And not just because I, too, have a pair of red shoes and my child asks me why I can’t be like “all the other mothers.” Like Vianne, I wanted to reach out to others—particularly the women in my life—because I think goodness is defined by what we do, not what we don’t do, by who we include, not who we exclude. Rather than invite only close friends from this group or that, I decided to bring together the amazing and unique women I knew. It would be a chance for them to network, to make new friends.
So I abandoned the usual ritual on V Day of taking an annual inventory of guys I’d dated over the past 12 month. Rather than analyzing why each love connection short circuited or never even had enough electricity to fizzle at all—I had dated guys ranging in age from their twenties to their fifties and in occupations from songwriters to businessmen to blue collar workers. Most had been the usual One-Date-Wonders. Turning my attention instead to my guest list, I found my women friends were even more diverse…and interesting.
Sports nuts and Art lovers. Nurses and teachers. A publicist, a coach, counselors. Never marrieds, remarrieds, forever marrieds. Moms and Grandmothers. Dog lovers, vegetarians, democrats, republicans. Horsewomen, runners, farm girls. Californians, New Orleanians, Yankee Italians. A band leader. A band leader’s wife. It could have been a disaster. But something told me to chance it anyway. I was worried no one would come. Valentine’s Eve fell on a weeknight and everyone is so busy. But shortly after the invitations were sent, the replies began rolling in. Everyone was excited.
Thus commenced the “Valentine’s Eve Hopeful Romantic Party.” Those with sweethearts could still celebrate with their guys and those without would be too tired from the party to care. Either way we’d all usher in the Big Day together.
So….make your guest list and get going! Whether you use Facebook, send an Evite or an invitation by mail—store bought or created by you—do it now. Just one week till V Day. And this year it’s on a weekend—a real bonus. If you’re inviting women who have sweethearts, then make it next Friday, on Valentine’s Eve. That way you can still see your honey, and if you don’t have one, you’ll be too tired to care.