Unconventional, Unforgettable, and …Fictional Love — Part I
best stories whose example you hopefully DO NOT follow
“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” — Wuthering Heights
I have always thought that love stories portrayed in books or movies are 99% unconventional and only 1% conventional. While in reality, the opposite is true.
“Thank God!” — I imagine hearing most people exclaim because if real-life love resembled the Wuthering Heights type, the world would have been full of lonely souls wandering around, and overpopulation…not an issue at all.
People prefer easy love stories for themselves and common sense is highly responsible for it. Imagine having to choose between two paths: A straight, tranquil road beside the summer sea with a light breeze guiding your steps, or a mountain track full of thorns and wrecked signals on a cold day with thunders over your head.
Reasonably you would choose the beautiful road, while very interested in watching from the distance the others climbing the mountain. That’s why we are absolutely captivated by the fictional tormented, distressing romances.
(Even though when the conditions change, perfect roads can become dangerous too. An unexpected turn of the weather and the road is suddenly flooded. While walking through a mountain track is hard, really hard, but if you manage to succeed just once, the view from the top would be breathtaking.)
In fiction, you do not have to choose. There is no such thing as simple, plain romance. It’s what attracts us towards them. What most of us think love is all about till we lose our innocence. Dreamlike atmospheres, complex feelings, sometimes forbidden ones, great contradictions are the common elements of good books and movies.
But beware, oh you innocent soul! Do not follow their steps unless you want to condemn humanity to a hundred years of solitude…And if you really insist on climbing that mountain, if you are brave enough, make sure your story falls into one of the five categories I have discovered through all these years of scrutinizing unconventional romances in books and movies:
Category I — The tormented
To understand how tormented Wuthering heights is, just read the quote above several times. A woman torn between the love of her childhood friend/stepbrother/gypsy orphan/soulmate and a conventionally handsome/rich/educated man. Could a bond born from the beginning of times survive betrayal, revenge, hatred? Could it go beyond the dimensions we know?
You cannot pretend to read Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series and find everyday life love stories. From The shadow of the wind to The labyrinth of the spirits, passing from Angel’s game, love is shown to be a blessing and a curse for the main characters. The source of paradisiac delight and the beginning of the path that brings them closer to their own hell in life.
Like Nuria’s sacrifice craving for a man who doesn’t exist anymore. Julián and his unbearably forbidden love for a ghost. David’s surreal yet real feelings for unreachable women. Isabella..well, the list is way too long and you will have to find it out yourself.
A common man and a courtesan fall in love in French high society salons. He pretends not to be jealous and she pretends to be his, and his alone. Despite all adversities, they try leaving the past behind and building a new life. With these premises, tragedy is waiting around the corner in The Lady of the Camellias and its many variations: Moulin Rouge movie, La Traviata opera, and many more.
Is he the Angel of Music? Or is he the demon inside her head that pushes her boundaries too far? The fight between good and bad has never been more challenging than when you can’t define what bad really is. When it’s hard to recognize the thin line separating love from obsession. Can a terrifying phantom living in the sewers of the Opéra de Paris, be worthy of love? Is he able to love? The Phantom of the Opera suggests but lets our heart finally decide.
Category II — The time-enduring
“And he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits”
The meaning of love that endures time reaches a whole new level in Love in the Time of Cholera. When an ephemeral teen romance for one, becomes the sense of life for another. The reason to get up, live passionately, and become better each and every day during an entire lifetime until that love comes back to you. A tale of never-dying hope.
Northern Italy in the 80s. Two boys. A teenager and an American visiting student find out that love shows itself even when you fight it, even when nothing seems right. The place, the time, the circumstances. Call me by your name and I’ll call you by yours, becomes the motto of what’s meant to be when an extraordinary connection of two souls becomes irresistible and unchangeable by time and physical distance.
“Can’t you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you. ”
They met once when she was an orphaned 12 years old girl with a dark future ahead and he, a handsome high society entrepreneur with a good-hearted nature. That day she decided to face the greatest struggle by turning into a real Geisha and her life changed forever. Reaching a forbidden, almost impossible love is the dream in Memoirs of a Geisha, and the dream gives Sayuri’s life meaning and aim. Are things decided by fate or is fighting hard which brings us closer to what we want the most?
An orphaned, bright, and independent girl in the 1800s, who finds work in a great dark mansion full of mysteries. Jane Eyre is humble, not the most beautiful of girls or the most talkative, but her heart is fierce. While Mr. Rochester’s is hard as a rock and his manners not very gentlemanly. She manages to bring out the tenderness hidden inside him, although nothing is as it seems. A controversial past can tear two such diverse people apart. Time and distance should do the rest. But can they?
Get out of here! Go back to Rome. You’re young and the world is yours. I’m old. I don’t want to hear you talk anymore. I want to hear others talking about you. Don’t come back. Don’t think about us. Don’t look back. Don’t write. Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don’t come see me. I won’t let you in my house. Understand?
The ambitions of a poor boy in an Italian village in Sicily, fly low. He loves the rich and aristocratic Elena and the movies projected in the Cinema Paradiso. His future is foggy and uncertain. They fight against her family, the circumstances, her leaving for university, but winning is not an option when also fate gets in their way. Can love be a burden and loss bring out a strength someone never knew he had? Can you forget and still remember for the rest of your life?
To be continued…
