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Love and Other Disasters
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- Spoilers -
I discovered this movie when I was looking through Netflix for something funny, something romantic, something quirky, something new. I used to spend a lot of time doing this, and would then watch while doing a coloring book. Some movies were alright, some I turned off pretty quickly, and others were gems I had never, ever heard of, such as She-Devil, the story of a woman who seeks total revenge after her husband cheats on her. Love and Other Disasters film was another surprise gem that I just love. The writing is good, the style is experimental, and the cameo appearances are hilarious. My one issue is the main character, but she does not by any means ruin the movie and I will get into that later.
The movie opens on London with text from the screenplay telling us that our main character is Emily "Jacks" Jackson (Brittany Murphy), who speaks with something of an American accent. She works for Vogue as a wardrobe stylist and has two best friends: her gay roommate Peter (Matthew Rhys) and the eccentric poet Tallulah (Catherine Tate). At the beginning of the film, Jacks is constantly sleeping with her ex-boyfriend James, Tallulah has just started dating a black man named Freedom who makes her feel very self-conscious about her pale, freckly skin, and Peter has pretty much always been a single, failed screenwriter. The banter between these characters and other characters is probably the strongest part of the film. Other important characters are Paolo (Santiago Cabrera), a sexy Spanish photography assistant at Vogue, and Finlay (Jamie Sives), an art gallery owner who lost his partner to AIDS several years ago.
Unfortunately, almost immediately we begin to see the weakness in the writing of the main character: Jacks is supposed to be highly flawed but still ends up seeming too perfect. She works for Vogue, but she does not feel that fashion is the most important thing. She speaks Spanish fluently, she can tango even after several drinks, she has an amazing body and always wears frilly underwear, and generally looks like a modern Audrey Hepburn. (I have some suspicion that they picked her for this last quality.) The main conflict surrounding Jacks is that she holds romantic interests at arm's length and then has only women and gay men as close friends. She thinks her gaydar is amazing and thinks that Paolo is gay, but he is actually falling in love with her. There are several moments where the two hit it off after their initial misunderstandings, and many other moments were Paolo tries and fails to convey his feelings to Jacks. Even when he kisses her, she laughs and thinks he is just drunk. All of this can work in a character, but there is a certain amateur quality to Murphy's performance that makes it all very awkward. However, every other actor is absolutely perfect, and in some ways Murphy's odd acting actually enhances their reactions to her.
Tallulah is played by the amazing Catherine Tate, who I adore from The Catherine Tate Show and Doctor Who. She is the daughter of a wealthy socialite, and is something of an ugly duckling. She has bright red hair, freckly skin, and a curvy figure that she often puts ridiculous dresses on. She smokes all the time, and makes hash brownies whenever she has to go to a social event where she will see her mother. Despite her negative feelings towards her mother, Tallulah is clearly supported by her. She does nothing but write terrible poetry and clearly is not accustomed to taking care of herself. Her relationships are all failures and losers, emphasized by the fact that Freedom turned out to already be married. Her social graces are almost nonexistent, but she has some very funny scenes that are delivered perfectly.
While Jacks is the center of attention, it turns out that the whole movie is really from Peter's perspective. When he tells stories or imagines how things are going to go, we actually get to see what is going on in his head. There are a lot of psyche out moments when we think he has met someone or that time has skipped ahead, but it was really just his imagination. Peter's main conflict is that he bumped into a beautiful man who was carrying a magazine with the name David Williams on the address. After some friends ask around, their friend Finlay assures Peter that he knows David Williams, that he is gay, and that he is a lovely man who would be perfect for Peter. Unfortunately, Peter does not get to meet David for quite some time due to schedule changes, promotions, and Peter's dread of the fact that everyone, including David, knows about his crush on a man he bumped into one time. When he finally gets to meet David, he is dismayed to discover that he is the wrong man, but overwhelmed when he sees that the man he bumped into was actually David's assistant Tom. He and Tom have a date, which goes terribly since Tom is a shallow, narcissistic actor. Peter accepts that he might just stay single for a while.
Regarding Peter, one of my favorite scenes from the movie is when he goes to visit a therapist that Finlay recommended (and turns out to be a daydream). Dawn French plays the therapist who forgets Peter's name and makes bad jokes. She explains to him that his problems may come from the fact that he does not understand all of what goes into a relationship. She says that a relationship can be measured in farts. In the beginning, both partners hide their flaws as they would a fart, pretending that neither of them ever fart. Then there is the first "did you fart?" question that leads to a time of both partners thinking the other's farts are hilarious or cute. After that, there is a "fork in the fart." Either both partners come to ignore the farts entirely, accepting them as part of the person, or they start to resent the farts, and see them as rancid and bad. At the time, this seems completely ridiculous, but as Peter's daydreams about his relationship with the beautiful David-who-turned-out-to-be-Tom, he sees there was some merit. After being exposed to all of Tom's unpleasantness, the two of them are lying in bed after sleeping together, but Peter cannot get to sleep with Tom in the bed. He tries to ignore the obvious lack of chemistry, but then Tom farts in his sleep and we know for sure that Peter knows that they are not at all meant to be.
The climax of the film comes when Jacks proposes that she and Paolo get married in order to keep him from being deported. He gets swept up into her ridiculous idea, and is not able to admit that he is not gay until they are standing in front of the minister at the courthouse. Jacks is horrified by the deception and pushes him away, but later on Peter gets her to see that Paolo was not trying to lie to her, that she had made the assumption herself and put him in difficult situation after situation. She drives to the airport and buys a ticket to Buenos Aires to see him and gamble on the relationship.
At the end of the movie, everyone gets a happy ending when Peter's screenplay based on their lives is accepted by a major film company and turned into a big romance featuring Orlando Bloom and Gwyneth Paltrow called Love Disasters. The gay men are turned into lesbians, the main characters have exaggerated accents, and at the end of the film the two leads run to each other in the airport and kiss.
What actually happens is this:
1. After his screenplay was accepted, Peter runs into the real David Williams again, who congratulates him on finishing such a big project. Peter realizes that he never gave David a chance at all, despite being such a nice, gay man. He walks off to catch his train, then goes running after David to apologize and ask him to dinner. David thinks about it and says that he's been daydreaming about having dinner with Peter. What if Peter does not live up to expectation? Peter smiles and says that he will just have to keep taking David to dinner until he gets it right.
2. Jacks and Paolo did reunite, but she arrived in Buenos Aires with a bad case of diarrhea that made the trip less than romantic. Nevertheless, by the time Peter's movie is completed, Jacks is far along in her pregnancy and her water bursts just before the credits role.
3. Tallulah and James (Jacks' ex-boyfriend) end up together. Everyone had suspected that James was the one who told immigration about Paolo, but it turns out that James is a more decent fellow than that, and he and Tallulah seem happy together in their money and odd temperaments.
Really, it's just a fun movie.
