Friday, March 16, 2001 - Let's write a love story

How does a typical romantic drama go? Credits, introduce the main character, brief bittersweet synopsis of their lonely life, the "encounter" with main character number two, lots of tension, hostility, screwing around, enter the foil (fiance, suitor, family), and they all get together in the end, end credits.

The average Hindi film even goes it one better, with a formula so rigid it completely overlooks glaring holes in the plot, giving the final product a surreal quality, with all that dancing on top of trains, running around trees in Switzerland, looking for the perfect backdrop for the music sequences.

Let's write something fresh. Viewers are so much brighter than all that. What to do. Credits embedded someplace in the middle. Follow a more realistic string of events, typical of reality, but unheard of in films, making it impossible for the viewer to predict the ending, unless they're truly psychic.

High school students, different cultures, parental tension, but not the main focus of the film, fall for each other and all of those feelings, she has sex with someone else for a change, he never finds out about it, the brother sees it all and blackmails her, winning sexual favors from his sister, she turns to the boy for comfort, he knows something's troubling her and does what is purported to be the right thing in such situations, accepts her love and offers his support unconditionally. In the end he realizes he knows what's been going on all along, for there are cluse there and he's seen everything the audience has seen.

Whether they like it or think it's terrible, no viewer will be able to say they've seen it before.

-George