Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Truly, Madly, Deeply

If you're going to watch TRULY MADLY DEEPLY, I recommend going into it totally blind. I'm glad I did. All I knew was that it was a love story starring Alan Rickman and directed by Anthony Minghella. I didn't know anything about the plot, and I think it succeeded in being more thought provoking and emotional than if I had gone in with an understanding of the premise.

So, stop reading if you don't want to know the basics.

As the film opens, we meet Juliet Stevenson as a translator who has shut herself off from the outside world, crippled with the mourning of her recently and untimely deceased boyfriend, played by Alan Rickman. She tells her therapist she still hears him talking to her, sometimes, in her head, and just as the black hole of her depression seems like it's about to swallow her, Rickman inexplicably shows up as a ghost.

At first, the two lovers are overjoyed to see each other. Stevenson plays hooky from work and the two play together in her apartment in the child-like way that people who intimate with each other often do. These scenes are both amazing and awkward. On one hand, Stevenson and Rickman throw themselves into these performances with abandon, disappearing into the characters. On the other, most audiences probably aren't used to seeing this kind of behavior taking place anywhere other than behind the safety of closed doors.

So, Minghella has hooked us and tricked us twice, here -- first, allowing the viewer to settle down into a depressing tear jerker mood, then switching things to a rather light-hearted fantasy story. But the master stroke comes in the last half of the film, when the most unexpected development of all occurs, more unexpected than the existence of ghosts -- Stevenson starts to get over Rickman.

This third layer of the story, after grief and reclaimed happiness, is probably the most uncomfortable for most people, romantics and cynics alike, to confront. The idea that the person you thought was perfect, who you thought you'd love forever, who you wanted back so badly, maybe wasn't so perfect after all.

Part of this creeping dissatisfaction comes from the way Rickman infiltrates the home Stevenson was just beginning to claim as her own as she came into her own as an independent woman. Rickman insists on cranking up the heat, invites all his ghost buddies over, starts rearranging the furniture. Was he always like this and she had just forgotten about it? Is this some side effect of being a ghost? Or does Rickman have his own ulterior motives?

Despite the fantasy elements, this is about as realistic a take on a mature, intimate relationship that you're likely to see in the movies. But that's not to say TRULY MADLY DEEPLY is a cold and sarcastic movie. It is as warm and alive as any other romance. It's just a little more grown up.