With a title like A Happy Event (or Un hereux événement, its original French name), one might expect this film to be a cheery little comedy that neatly tied clichés and cuteness with a bow. However, once the story of Barbara (Louise Bourgoin) and Nico (Pio Marmaï) progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that there is…
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A Royal Affair brings some history of the Danish monarchy to the big screen. It is set during the Englightenment, a time in eighteenth century Europe where new ideas of reason and rights were beginning to emerge. The film opens with Denmark gaining a new Queen, Caroline (Alicia Vikander) who is bitterly disappointed when she…
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Why is Christmas so disappointing for adults? Ever since I was a kid, Christmas was the best thing in the year, the thing I most looked forward to. But as many others will probably agree, as you get older, that magic lessens and especially in my case, is replaced by a pessimism and cynicism I…
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Hollywood doesn’t anecdote the ‘happily ever after’ of modern love anymore without doctoring it with clichés, 30 second orgasms and a sense of overall perfection. This is what Sarah Polley tried to steer away from when she wrote and directed Take This Waltz. Take This Waltz is not a feel good comedy. It is a rich…
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Today I found myself justifying my relationship with my boyfriend to a bank teller. I assured her that we were “serious” and we’d talked about marriage. What I was really trying to say was: ‘I have a boyfriend; we still live with our parents, but please take us seriously’. Admitting that I have a boyfriend…
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Café de Flore is a labour of love by writer/director Jean-Marc Valee (C.R.A.Z.Y). It is an account of two very different love stories – tales separated by different characters, countries and time periods. In spite of all this, an overarching feeling of loss, an intense rawness and a bittersweet tension link the two parts together….
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Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Picture at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Like Crazy is an emotional film about the impact of first love and the challenges that couples face in order to stay together. The film follows a British college student (Felicity Jones) and her American classmate (Anton Yelchin) who begin a passionate…
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Love is one of those things. Overrated, underrated, underwritten, overwritten, sublime, misunderstood. The list could go on and on. Love is such an individual experience that it’s hard to accurately depict it in books and films, yet that certainly doesn’t stop filmmakers and authors from trying. Lauren Kate’s Fallen in Love is a book of four love stories,…
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When people ask me what kind of writing I do, I usually say that, amongst other things, I write a column about relationships. Most people correctly assume that I write about romantic relationships, usually between two people, and usually between a lady and a dude (apologies about this; I try really hard to be inclusive…
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The laws of operant conditioning and its methods of shaping behaviour have been applied to numerous situations and purposes in our ever-changing world since the reward/punishment model was pioneered by Burrhus Frederic Skinner many moons ago. One such situation is the quest to find a romantic partner – a task that continues to be one…
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My mother and I spoke about divorce the other day. We spoke about how it can be difficult to believe in true love when the divorce rate is getting higher and higher. Even though my mother has been married for twenty years, and I have only six months under my belt, we were both equally…
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Steve Martin has to be one of my favourite actors. Comical genius-ness aside, there are few men in my mind who can sport the white wizard look and get away with it. Oddly enough, he is one of them (although George Clooney ultimately takes the calamari with his trademark salt and pepper crop and of…
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A few weeks ago, my ex changed his facebook relationship status. Some of you might know him as Bon Jovi. Others of you might know him by his real name (and even though I have zero misconceptions about how many people read my articles and the realistic likelihood of legal action, I still prefer to…
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I have a bad feminist confession. Sometimes, I’m really quite jealous of the way women in Victorian literature were allowed to just completely fall apart when struck down by lovesickness, that most literary of afflictions. For those young, hopelessly romantic girls, who wore too much on their sleeves and fell in love too easily with…
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