Yo…
Is (500) Days of Summer a rom-com?
Like…rom-coms are popular movies i.e. Sleepless in Seattle, While You Were Sleeping and Notting Hill: “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.” Boom!
Boy meets girl, just over an hour of obstacles prevents their romantic union, a best friend provides unhelpful advice…there’s a whole formula. Typically there’s either a big kiss or an impassioned speech professing grand love at the end. Cue awww and credits.
But every so often at the movies we get a non-rom-com…it’s still boy meets girl, it’s still an hour of obstacles preventing their romantic union and yet it doesn’t fully adhere to the comforting Hollywood formula.
You can follow the recipe exactly and your food will taste fine.
However, there’s a delicious cooking freedom when you don’t follow the rules…you don’t eye-level with a measuring cup, boldly adding personal flourishes…yo that food is tasty.
Same goes for non-rom-coms: Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally and…(500) Days of Summer. These are tasty and satisfying movies—well stocked with romance and crowded with drama and scintillating performances—that didn’t follow the rom-com sidewalk.
It takes no courage to walk the sidewalk: that’s the path laid out for everyone. You know exactly where it goes. There’s no surprises…or even delights to walking a sidewalk.
Cue Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
So true, especially for the non-rom-coms who take the less traveled romantic road.
(One of my favourite non-rom-coms is An Affair to Remember a 1957 film: Cary Grant is the boy and Deborah Kerr is the girl. As the title clearly suggests they’re both entangled in relationships when Cupid’s bow strikes their hearts. Spicy! You can see clips of An Affair as well as the fateful Empire State Building ending in the classic rom-com: Sleepless in Seattle. It’s all connected.)
Honestly: if you’ve enjoyed (500) Days of Summer chances are you’ll adore Young Werther.
Alison Pill is the girl and the boy is…well: you decide: Patrick J. Adams or Douglas Booth?
Douglas Booth plays said Young Werther. One fateful day he’s smitten with Alison Pill (Charlotte).
There’s just one pesky problem: Charlotte is engaged to Patrick J. Adams (Albert). See?
When I first saw the trailer I instantly thought of Werther’s candy…the butterscotch hard candy from Germany, yeah?
Turns out I wasn’t that off…this wasn’t inspired by hard German candy, rather it’s inspired by a German novel: The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The opening title card of the movie reads: “Based on the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance: that drove the entirety of Europe into a full-on literary tizzy. Sort of like Beatlemania? But for books.”
When Young Werther premiered at TIFF 24 the writer and director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço wrote a reflection for the CBC:
In the end, my adaptation of The Sorrows of Young Werther is less about replicating Goethe’s story beat-for-beat and more about capturing its spirit: the intensity, the longing, the wit, the humour, the depression, the joy, the pathos and that incredible feeling of being young, impassioned and convinced that the blush of new love is the only thing that matters, even when it becomes clear that the world — and the heart — is a far more complicated place.
Capturing the German novel’s spirit easily explains why Toronto is all over that trailer.
The King St. benches across from Roy Thomson Hall…I’ve sat there. Haven’t you?
More: TTC streetcars, OCAD and Fort York and a number of local locations appear throughout the movie. (Including Bar Ape Gelato on Rushton Rd. As Werther puts it: “So, there is this place that supposedly makes the best gelato known to humanity.” I’ve never been there, is it yummy? I asked José about that, that’s a bold claim you know? I typically wander into Little Italy for gelato.)
Toronto is breathtakingly Toronto and not "New York City" or "Chicago" or "Philadelphia." (Or The City, a location on the planet Earth. The City is the home of The Umbrella Academy. The Umbrella Academy house…the old mansion belonging to Sir Reginald Hargreeves? 4 King Street E in Hamilton.)
All that Toronto as Toronto in the movie circled back to the relationship that is the plot’s spine. Werther has a complicated lens through which he loves Charlotte: he is the visual definition of the classic Facebook status it’s complicated.
José clearly fancies Toronto…this movie is evidence of that love and yet Toronto can’t "love you back." That love is always gonna be a one-sided devotion. You read enough DC Comics and you’ll see Gotham always breaks Batman’s heart. Same for Hell’s Kitchen and Daredevil. Damn.
Some of the most endearing and complicated relationships we have are with our environments. Our cities.
Every season the Leafs break the hearts of so many passionate fans. (One of these years maybe they can…you know at least get out of the first round?! Shots fired.)
Sports and movies and music and dancing…all kinds of romantic experiences (some positive, some negative) unfold all around us. As Jay-Z raps about NYC: “Eight million stories out there in the naked city.” (Which granted, is a clever crime reference pulled from The Naked City; gritty 1940s film noir.)
Toronto as Toronto is just one subtle filmmaking compliment that third rail powers Young Werther.
Another? There’s a detectable wardrobe narrative that quietly presents itself. Like a married couple…Charlotte affects Werther and he affects her. Is this a spoiler alert…see in that trailer? She goes from a white outfit to a red dress. Meaning, what?
As you’ll hear in this My Summer Lair conversation…I asked José to reveal the wardrobe narrative philosophy. In part he said to me: “the colour that we were associating with Werther so much at the beginning of the film is red. And Charlotte was much more in blues and neutrals. And over the course of the film, yeah, they start to adopt pieces of each other’s wardrobe as they’re coming together and start to even each other out.”
When is a rom-com not a rom-com? When there’s a wardrobe narrative. Just like (500) Days of Summer from director Marc Webb.
When Joseph Gordon-Levitt spoke with Vanity Fair; he confirmed an interesting insight into Webb’s creative process behind the colors in 500 Days:
“If you track the color blue throughout the movie, you’ll notice it. When you surround an actor with the color of their eyes, especially when you have these striking blue eyes like Zooey has, it really makes the eyes pop on screen.”
When is a rom-com not a rom-com? When you add blue to make an actor’s eyes pop on screen. Director Marc Webb has described the (500) Days of Summer as more of a coming of age story as opposed to a rom-com.
And in Young Werther there’s a notable scene with Werther and Charlotte, are in the park (can you tell which one?) lying on the blanket and just reading…there’s a clothes on intimacy to that moment.
Even with the romance and bold declaration of love I don’t want to make it seem like Young Werther is a rom-com. That comfortable intimacy…to read with someone in the same room/park deftly separate it from the traditional rom-com movie formula.
Young Werther could use a stronger soundtrack. That’s a missed opportunity…to create a contagious mixtape of Werther and Charlotte’s connection. And maybe Albert? (Another missed opportunity and more evidence why Young Werther is not exactly a rom-com: big laughs are missing. It’s more charming than comedic, does that make sense? More rom than com.)
Charlotte played by Alison Pill could be better defined…I don’t think for the audience it’ll be love at first sight. Granted the movie is called Young Werther so it’s not about her (and yet it is about her.).
And yet the movie is endearing. Young Werther is adorable. In a non-puppies sorta way.
It opens today (January 10th) at various Cineplex locations. (That, oddly I don’t think appear in a movie set in Toronto…heh. Wasted marketing opportunity.)
Go: sure Young Werther is #PantsWorthy but now…you’ll get this throwaway line in (500) Days of Summer:
McKenzie: “Okay. Who’s singing next?”
Summer (Zooey Deschanel): “I nominate young Werther here.”
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt): “I’m not really drunk enough...”
Summer: “Bartender!”
See? It’s all connected.
The attached MSL conversation with writer and director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço references Soderbergh’s Oceans 11, of course (500) Days of Summer (there is a connection between the movies and I didn’t share it here!) and it ends with…two Must See Recommendations from José: Licorice Pizza and Alien: Romulus.
Huh. I did not expect us to bring up either movie when I sat down to hit record. Maybe Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza? Indie mostly non-mainstream filmmaker…yeah, maybe. That’s weird but eh…not too weird.
But Alien: Romulus? That really was an Alien reference. Strange yet delightful way to conclude our conversation.
#PantsWorthy: Your Tomorrow
If you wanna see a documentary set in Toronto instead of a feature film set in Toronto: Your Tomorrow (also fresh from TIFF 24) the Ontario Place documentary? It’s screening at Revue Cinema in Roncesvalles.
“Ali Weinstein’s documentary captures the final year of Toronto’s celebrated Ontario Place, as the beloved provincial park is sectioned off for redevelopment while visitors keep showing up to walk its trails, enjoy the lake, or just check on the tomatoes they’re cultivating by the shore.”
I spoke to Ali Weinstein and that’ll be an upcoming My Pal Sammy.
For now…go and check out Your Tomorrow.
Or check out Young Werther.
Thanks For Checking Me Out…
Sammy Younan
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
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