The Half of It: A Modern Symposium on Love
How Plato’s The Symposium encapsulates Alice Wu’s exploration of love
Warning: contains spoilers
When Netflix released Alice Wu’s The Half of It on May 1st, hype circulated over the protagonist’s intersectional identity. Asian and lesbian, Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) shows us the challenges of being closeted and Chinese in a fictional, white and conservative town named Squahamish.
Beneath its high school rom-com tropes, The Half of It is a thoughtfully written exploration of love and its various definitions. The film sets a philosophical tone with an opening quote from Plato’s The Symposium:
“Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole”
A foundational work of Western thought, The Symposium features six speeches from wisemen who proclaim their definitions of love at an Ancient Athenian cocktail party. The quote above—taken from Aristophanes’s speech—leads us to believe that the film defines love as looking for one’s other half.
