Only Love: Some rambling thoughts
Aug. 11th, 2006 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feliciakwYesterday, thanks to a post on numb3rs.org , I was able to Tivo Only Love, a movie which looks to have been a 2-part made-for-TV miniseries starring Rob Morrow, Marisa Tomei, and Mathilda May, circa 1998. (Marisa gets top billing, but imo it should be Rob. You'll see why later.) The imdb user reviews are mediocre at best, so I really didn’t want to pay money for it. Yay that it aired on WE so I could Tivo it.
When Geo got home from work about mid-way through my viewing, he asked what I was watching. I told him a Rob Morrow movie from several years back, Only Love. It’s based on an Erich Segal book. “Egh,” Geo says. “The guy who wrote Love Story. Be sure you’ve got your insulin.”
For more rambling thoughts,
First impression: Rob Morrow and Marisa Tomei are so cute together it borders on the disgusting.
Second impression: I'm rather unnerved by how much RM looks like Jon Stewart when his hair is grayed.
Third impression: This movie was freakishly long (or felt so). It must have been broadcast as a 2-part miniseries originally, because there was a freeze frame about midway through where I thought they were going to cut it off. Neither was I too impressed with the structure of the movie and the constant reminders of which timeline we were in. As if the way the actors were made up didn’t tell us that.
Fourth impression: I'm reminded why I never (or very rarely) watch the "women's channels." They're far too melodramatic for my tastes.
The Reader's Digest version:
The movie spans a period of approximately 16 years. The modern timeline takes place in 1998 (very nostalgic to see the WTC in the NY skyline); the flashbacks date back to 1982.
RM plays Matthew Hiller, a doctor who goes to Africa with the fictitious version of Doctors Without Borders. He's also a very talented pianist, which comes into play in the emotional part of the story line, but I'm not gonna get into that. Marisa Tomei plays Evie, a very close friend (from college, from what I gather), who marries a symphonic conductor quite a bit older than she. Rob & Marisa play so very well off each other with the teasing sibling-like friendship that, as I said, they're way too cute together, and much more enjoyable to watch than Matthew’s primary romantic relationship.
While in Amsterdam for orientation before heading to Africa, Matthew meets another doctor, an Italian woman named Silvia (Mathilda May). Silvia's father is a very wealthy businessman who wants her to come home and marry the son of another very wealthy businessman and thereby join the dynasties. But she goes to Africa. Matthew and Silvia of course fall in love. Everything goes swimmingly through the first third of the movie, and Rob plays the romantic so very, very well. (Still, I didn't have quite the silly smile on my face with Matthew and Silvia that I did with Matthew and Evie). Until, that is, Matt and Sil are returning from a weekend in the nearest town to the village where they're working and are ambushed by guerillas. Matthew gets shot in the head, and Silvia, upon getting him back to the village, is forced to call her father for help getting Matt to proper medical facilities. However, her father won't do anything until she promises to come home and marry Niko, the man to whom she's essentially been engaged by arranged marriage for most of her life. Of course she agrees and Matt recovers.
This particular section of the movie has much footage that I imagine could end up as screen caps to be used to illustrate Don injuries in the Numb3rs fandom. And I will confess that when Silvia rolls Matthew onto his back after he goes down before automatic gunfire, my stomach clenched just a wee bit.
So, Silvia marries Niko, and Matthew returns to the States and studies to become a neurosurgeon. Evie is there to greet him and console him and share her happy news that she's pregnant. Again, Rob and Marisa are too cute for words.
Matthew succeeds in his aspirations, and from what I can tell finds an experimental cure for brain tumors. (Yes, he finds a cure for cancer. Can we get any more cliché? Not to say that such a treatment wouldn't be an amazing thing in real life--and maybe it is already. I don't know--but within the context of this story it . . . seemed a bit formula. Anyway . . . )
All of this information is presented as "flashback" interspersed between the current story line, which is that Silvia has developed a brain tumor, and she and Niko have come to seek Matthew's help and his experimental cure. We do know that in the 1998 time line, Matthew and Evie are married.
(More flashback) After several years of success as a doctor, Matthew bumps into Evie at an art gallery in Europe. They have dinner together, at which time Evie tells Matt she's divorced. He offers to extend his stay if she wants him to. Have I mentioned that they're too sweet together?
So Matt and Evie fall in love (they also discuss the possible attraction they had for each other in college but never acted on). Matt meets Evie's two teenage daughters, everything is way too adorable (this whole thing would be the part with me and my silly smile), and Matthew and Evie get married.
Two years after they're married, Silvia (along with Niko) shows up with the brain tumor. Matthew administers his experimental treatment. Things are optimistic but go down hill quickly. Evie finally asks Matt why he's taking this case so hard. He tells her the patient is Silvia, and Evie, having met Silvia when Sil and Matt were in love, and knowing how long (12 years) it took Matt to move on with his (social) life after Sil married someone else, Evie is insecure and worried.
In the final minutes of the movie, Matthew gives Silvia the not-so-optimistic news (I guess Niko has returned to Italy for whatever reason, work or to be with their sons or something. Or had business meetings in the States . . . I must have missed that part), and Silvia asks Matt to dinner. She wants to know that he forgives her for what she did. He assures her he does. She invites him to her room for a nightcap. He accepts. She tries to put the moves on him. “I want us to be together again,” she says. (“Don’t do it, Matt!” I’m thinking as the terminally ill, turbaned temptress is trying her best to seduce her old love.) He’s definitely tempted, but gently pushes her away. “I can’t,” he says. She asks him, "Can you tell me that you don’t want to?" He replies, “I can tell you that I can’t want to." He obviously still cares for Sil, loves her even, but he loves his wife and refuses to betray her. (Yay Matthew! Evie's always been much better for you anyway.) Silvia backs off. Matt gets ready to leave. Silvia collapses. Matt is with her when she dies. If I weren't trying to get over the contrived meladrama (dare I say “fic-ness”?) of it, I might have cried. But it was just too formula, too predictable.
On Matt’s journey home, there’s a moment in which he stops to contemplate a ring that Sil gave him in Africa that he wore up until he fell in love with Evie and kept on a key ring thereafter. He takes it off the key ring and drops it into the bay. Very Titanic.
Matt goes home to find Evie playing her cello. He sits down at the piano—which he hasn't played since Silvia broke off their relationship years ago, in spite of all sorts of encouragement from Evie—and plays a passionate duet with his wife.
The End.
High points: Anything with Rob and Marisa. Anything with Rob, period.
Low points: Anything with terminally ill Silvia (except for the parts with Rob).
I guess I'm glad I saw it, but I'm VERY glad I didn't pay for it.
Acting was good, though not overly demanding on this one.
Romantic Rob makes me smile, and he and Marisa Tomei were just way too cute. Have I mentioned that already?
Upon further reflection . . .
So, even though I wasn’t impressed with this movie the first time through (it did seem long and tedious at times), still, it got me to thinking, which is always a good thing for a movie to do. You see, I’ve developed the habit of trying to figure out why I don’t like a movie or book or TV show. Even if my final conclusion is “I can’t explain it, I just don’t (or sometimes “I just do”) like it," I have to at least try to figure it out. So after thinking about it a little, I've decided that I like it better than I thought I did.
Upon further reflection, I realized that this story—this romantic drama—is told, essentially, from a man’s point of view (hence the reason why I think RM should have gotten top billing. Matthew Hiller is the main character). Is that common? I tend to think of romances as being told from a woman’s point of view. And if it is told from the man’s point of view, is it an overly romanticized depiction of men’s emotions? How women “wish” men would be rather than how men really are? Or is it a fairly good depiction of a side of men that isn’t often presented? (Keeping in mind, of course that people—both men and women—are individuals and blanket generalizations can get touchy.) I don’t know anything about the author, and I’ve never seen or read Love Story, but Geo says he thinks Love Story was also told from the POV of the male protagonist. (What little I know of Love Story, I seem to recall it involving the slow cancerous death of the female lead.)
I'm not really into romatic tragedy/drama, so Love Story has never been on my list of want-to-see movies. If I'm gonna watch romance at all, I usually go for the romantic comedy.
I’ve not seen my favorite romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally . . . , in a long time, but I think the POV in that movie is split pretty evenly between Harry and Sally. And another “romantic comedy” (which I hesitate to categorize as such, though I can see it fitting there) that I’ve seen recently and liked was RM’s Maze. (I’ll write an entry on that one at some point. It’s a great little indie film.) Also told primarily from a man’s POV.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that given a day or two to reflect, I like RM’s work in pretty much any project he undertakes. True, I’ve not seen a lot of his work that's out there. And there are some things he’s done that I like much better than others (NX and N3 being at the top of the list; Only Love being toward the bottom). But his work in any of the projects I’ve seen . . . it’s great!
And all this leads me to I just gotta say . . . I love men. Yes, there are more than a few that drive me nuts on an individual level and whose company I don’t actively seek out, but generally speaking, men are wonderful creatures and I love ‘em. But I’ll delve into that topic another time.
And finally, yay for Fridays!
When Geo got home from work about mid-way through my viewing, he asked what I was watching. I told him a Rob Morrow movie from several years back, Only Love. It’s based on an Erich Segal book. “Egh,” Geo says. “The guy who wrote Love Story. Be sure you’ve got your insulin.”
For more rambling thoughts,
First impression: Rob Morrow and Marisa Tomei are so cute together it borders on the disgusting.
Second impression: I'm rather unnerved by how much RM looks like Jon Stewart when his hair is grayed.
Third impression: This movie was freakishly long (or felt so). It must have been broadcast as a 2-part miniseries originally, because there was a freeze frame about midway through where I thought they were going to cut it off. Neither was I too impressed with the structure of the movie and the constant reminders of which timeline we were in. As if the way the actors were made up didn’t tell us that.
Fourth impression: I'm reminded why I never (or very rarely) watch the "women's channels." They're far too melodramatic for my tastes.
The Reader's Digest version:
The movie spans a period of approximately 16 years. The modern timeline takes place in 1998 (very nostalgic to see the WTC in the NY skyline); the flashbacks date back to 1982.
RM plays Matthew Hiller, a doctor who goes to Africa with the fictitious version of Doctors Without Borders. He's also a very talented pianist, which comes into play in the emotional part of the story line, but I'm not gonna get into that. Marisa Tomei plays Evie, a very close friend (from college, from what I gather), who marries a symphonic conductor quite a bit older than she. Rob & Marisa play so very well off each other with the teasing sibling-like friendship that, as I said, they're way too cute together, and much more enjoyable to watch than Matthew’s primary romantic relationship.
While in Amsterdam for orientation before heading to Africa, Matthew meets another doctor, an Italian woman named Silvia (Mathilda May). Silvia's father is a very wealthy businessman who wants her to come home and marry the son of another very wealthy businessman and thereby join the dynasties. But she goes to Africa. Matthew and Silvia of course fall in love. Everything goes swimmingly through the first third of the movie, and Rob plays the romantic so very, very well. (Still, I didn't have quite the silly smile on my face with Matthew and Silvia that I did with Matthew and Evie). Until, that is, Matt and Sil are returning from a weekend in the nearest town to the village where they're working and are ambushed by guerillas. Matthew gets shot in the head, and Silvia, upon getting him back to the village, is forced to call her father for help getting Matt to proper medical facilities. However, her father won't do anything until she promises to come home and marry Niko, the man to whom she's essentially been engaged by arranged marriage for most of her life. Of course she agrees and Matt recovers.
This particular section of the movie has much footage that I imagine could end up as screen caps to be used to illustrate Don injuries in the Numb3rs fandom. And I will confess that when Silvia rolls Matthew onto his back after he goes down before automatic gunfire, my stomach clenched just a wee bit.
So, Silvia marries Niko, and Matthew returns to the States and studies to become a neurosurgeon. Evie is there to greet him and console him and share her happy news that she's pregnant. Again, Rob and Marisa are too cute for words.
Matthew succeeds in his aspirations, and from what I can tell finds an experimental cure for brain tumors. (Yes, he finds a cure for cancer. Can we get any more cliché? Not to say that such a treatment wouldn't be an amazing thing in real life--and maybe it is already. I don't know--but within the context of this story it . . . seemed a bit formula. Anyway . . . )
All of this information is presented as "flashback" interspersed between the current story line, which is that Silvia has developed a brain tumor, and she and Niko have come to seek Matthew's help and his experimental cure. We do know that in the 1998 time line, Matthew and Evie are married.
(More flashback) After several years of success as a doctor, Matthew bumps into Evie at an art gallery in Europe. They have dinner together, at which time Evie tells Matt she's divorced. He offers to extend his stay if she wants him to. Have I mentioned that they're too sweet together?
So Matt and Evie fall in love (they also discuss the possible attraction they had for each other in college but never acted on). Matt meets Evie's two teenage daughters, everything is way too adorable (this whole thing would be the part with me and my silly smile), and Matthew and Evie get married.
Two years after they're married, Silvia (along with Niko) shows up with the brain tumor. Matthew administers his experimental treatment. Things are optimistic but go down hill quickly. Evie finally asks Matt why he's taking this case so hard. He tells her the patient is Silvia, and Evie, having met Silvia when Sil and Matt were in love, and knowing how long (12 years) it took Matt to move on with his (social) life after Sil married someone else, Evie is insecure and worried.
In the final minutes of the movie, Matthew gives Silvia the not-so-optimistic news (I guess Niko has returned to Italy for whatever reason, work or to be with their sons or something. Or had business meetings in the States . . . I must have missed that part), and Silvia asks Matt to dinner. She wants to know that he forgives her for what she did. He assures her he does. She invites him to her room for a nightcap. He accepts. She tries to put the moves on him. “I want us to be together again,” she says. (“Don’t do it, Matt!” I’m thinking as the terminally ill, turbaned temptress is trying her best to seduce her old love.) He’s definitely tempted, but gently pushes her away. “I can’t,” he says. She asks him, "Can you tell me that you don’t want to?" He replies, “I can tell you that I can’t want to." He obviously still cares for Sil, loves her even, but he loves his wife and refuses to betray her. (Yay Matthew! Evie's always been much better for you anyway.) Silvia backs off. Matt gets ready to leave. Silvia collapses. Matt is with her when she dies. If I weren't trying to get over the contrived meladrama (dare I say “fic-ness”?) of it, I might have cried. But it was just too formula, too predictable.
On Matt’s journey home, there’s a moment in which he stops to contemplate a ring that Sil gave him in Africa that he wore up until he fell in love with Evie and kept on a key ring thereafter. He takes it off the key ring and drops it into the bay. Very Titanic.
Matt goes home to find Evie playing her cello. He sits down at the piano—which he hasn't played since Silvia broke off their relationship years ago, in spite of all sorts of encouragement from Evie—and plays a passionate duet with his wife.
The End.
High points: Anything with Rob and Marisa. Anything with Rob, period.
Low points: Anything with terminally ill Silvia (except for the parts with Rob).
I guess I'm glad I saw it, but I'm VERY glad I didn't pay for it.
Acting was good, though not overly demanding on this one.
Romantic Rob makes me smile, and he and Marisa Tomei were just way too cute. Have I mentioned that already?
Upon further reflection . . .
So, even though I wasn’t impressed with this movie the first time through (it did seem long and tedious at times), still, it got me to thinking, which is always a good thing for a movie to do. You see, I’ve developed the habit of trying to figure out why I don’t like a movie or book or TV show. Even if my final conclusion is “I can’t explain it, I just don’t (or sometimes “I just do”) like it," I have to at least try to figure it out. So after thinking about it a little, I've decided that I like it better than I thought I did.
Upon further reflection, I realized that this story—this romantic drama—is told, essentially, from a man’s point of view (hence the reason why I think RM should have gotten top billing. Matthew Hiller is the main character). Is that common? I tend to think of romances as being told from a woman’s point of view. And if it is told from the man’s point of view, is it an overly romanticized depiction of men’s emotions? How women “wish” men would be rather than how men really are? Or is it a fairly good depiction of a side of men that isn’t often presented? (Keeping in mind, of course that people—both men and women—are individuals and blanket generalizations can get touchy.) I don’t know anything about the author, and I’ve never seen or read Love Story, but Geo says he thinks Love Story was also told from the POV of the male protagonist. (What little I know of Love Story, I seem to recall it involving the slow cancerous death of the female lead.)
I'm not really into romatic tragedy/drama, so Love Story has never been on my list of want-to-see movies. If I'm gonna watch romance at all, I usually go for the romantic comedy.
I’ve not seen my favorite romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally . . . , in a long time, but I think the POV in that movie is split pretty evenly between Harry and Sally. And another “romantic comedy” (which I hesitate to categorize as such, though I can see it fitting there) that I’ve seen recently and liked was RM’s Maze. (I’ll write an entry on that one at some point. It’s a great little indie film.) Also told primarily from a man’s POV.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that given a day or two to reflect, I like RM’s work in pretty much any project he undertakes. True, I’ve not seen a lot of his work that's out there. And there are some things he’s done that I like much better than others (NX and N3 being at the top of the list; Only Love being toward the bottom). But his work in any of the projects I’ve seen . . . it’s great!
And all this leads me to I just gotta say . . . I love men. Yes, there are more than a few that drive me nuts on an individual level and whose company I don’t actively seek out, but generally speaking, men are wonderful creatures and I love ‘em. But I’ll delve into that topic another time.
And finally, yay for Fridays!
