LEZA'S OWN ROMANCE SPECIAL

Here's the movies that have reached out and grabbed me by the heart and then the ones that made me piss myself with rage!

LOVE:

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND-2004
-Michel Gondry

The fragile and ever fluctuating atmosphere of the psyche is beautifully depicted with blazing colors and a graceful, whimsical touch in this super romantic movie. If you want to see what memories look like, through the funhouse mirrors of subjective distortion and fantastical visuals, this is the thing. What begins as an interesting what if? blossoms and unwraps into a beguiling and enchanting love story that will keep you at the edge of your consciousness. This movie somehow pulls off the extraordinary feat of being so real, moment to moment, while sweeping you off, further and further into the unraveling mental labirynth of a man who has decided that the pain of remembering someone who has left him is too much to bear. This brings up great questions about the pain love often brings. You come to realize what a treasure the negative as well as the positive aspects of a person you love truly are. Unconditional love seems near impossible most of the time. But nobody is perfect. Sometimes the things you love most about someone end up being the things you hate most, once you get sick of their perpetual presence. It's all relative. But there is a message of hope and a warning to not judge the person you're with before you have taken a good look at yourself. Also Kate Winslet looks fucking awesome and hot in all those crazy hair colors!



SECRETARY-2002
Steven Shainberg

This is the sweetest movie about S&M you'll ever see. It's also extremely hot, surprising and unique. The characters, played by James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhall are painfully real and flawed. He has near crippling OCD and she's a recovering cutter. Each in their own position, attempting to fit in to a socially prescribed behavior, they collide and challenge what each has come to accept as possible, acceptable and fun. There is a real tension in the push and pull between them, which is psychologically profound and pretty damn erotic. At its core, this is an old fashioned love story. If you think of Clark Gable smacking all those ladies who would just not behave and sassy charmers like Caudette Colbert giving him a run for his money, you see a similar dynamic. But this movie is honest, challenging, and ultimately raw and poetic. A must see for adventurous hearts.



THE NIGHT PORTER-1974
Liliana Cavani

This is a movie that walks the PC line of acceptability and flat out taboo. An unlikely romance between a young woman in a concentration camp and the guard who favored her blossoms in the most bleak of circumstances and is re-kindled after the war when she ends up in the hotel where he is now the night porter, with her conductor husband. He is living in hiding and has a network of fellow Nazis who must lay low now that their time is passed and war tribunals are hot on their tails. This love story is so wrong and yet it makes sense. It is a raw, beautiful, heart-wrenching battle for love against ALL odds. After all that has happened, it is his turn to prove his loyalty and devotion to her in any way he can. This movie blew my mind, and turned me on despite all that decency proclaims to be acceptable.



NEKROMANTIK-1987
Jorg Buttgereit

Best for last. Ahhh necrophilia. Romantic? Oh yes!
What do you do when your day job is crime scene clean up and you decide to give your girl a nice little surprise? You bring her a corpse she can play with of course! But then what happens if she likes her new toy more than she likes you?
This is the ridiculous premise of this moody German film by the questionably sane Jorg Buttgereit. Questions of insanity aside, this movie pulls off its premise with flying colors. True eroticism lies on the fault line between life and death. When I had finished watching the final scene of this surprisingly profound movie, I felt more alive than I ever had before. It was like drinking warm blood from the neck of a freshly slaughtered chicken, it was like shooting heroin must feel like the first time, like bungee jumping, like driving a racecar and barely surviving with your life. Man, what a hit. I'm not endorsing necrophilia. It seems unsanitary. But this movie uses a corpse as a fabulous metaphor for the need people have for true intimacy. This is a lovey film and is absolutely beautifully shot, but definitely not for the faint of heart.




HATE:

LOVE ME IF YOU DARE-2003

What begins as an adorable lover's romp darkens and twists in the most unpleasant ways and before you know it, the two kids who had performed casually escalating pranks on each other have become adults and are actively ruining each other's entire lives without mercy, all in the name of their DARE based interactions. Dying for love was never depicted this literally. Please don't see this. It is a HUGE bummer and not sweet or cute or awesome at all!




TITANIC-1997

Have you ever been raped by a movie? I was. I am a Titanic survivor. I was only 16 and still technically a virgin (I think). I sobbed a third of my weight in water that night. And the night after that. And the night after that. My boyfriend, brave soldier that he was, sat by my side, stifling laughter, as I got repeatedly skullfucked by this piece of sappy ass nonsense. I even bought the soundtrack!
Finally I woke up out of my trance, after the thousanth time they tried to soak my ears up with Celine Dion's Oscar winning hit, My Heart Will Go On, on MTV. (I guess watching MTV WAS kinda my choice, but again, I was 16)
I felt debased and made a fool of. There is no way to recover from that shame. But I take it one day at a time. Each day, the memory of why I ever cared about some rich bitch letting her boy die and not caring about all the people who died on that boat, fades a bit more. Maybe one day, I will be human again.