Cinema Mon Amour: Film Students On Young Love
A reflection on young love in the modern day and how cinema has shaped our romantic expectations (As told by a group of university film students).
Young love. It escapes us all eventually. Some of us have known it for years, weeks or maybe felt it in our hearts for only moments. It can be found anywhere at any time, on a Sunday morning, on a margarita-fuelled night, in old friendships and in the freshness of a new unknown face. It is pure and strong and shines like sunshine on your back on a late summer afternoon.
In the modern day, life has become shaped by observation, expectation and comparison. As the dominant presence of technology casts a shadow over the everyday, it feels as if dating apps, the facade of social media and modern-day dating standards are totally influencing and redefining romance and the nature of young love. It is unsurprising that when young people reflect on love they observe, expect and compare with their peers, with the idealistic portrayal of cinema and media and what is on their phone screens.
I am a romantic, deeply ambitious and nostalgic person. I can’t help but look forward and envision the most successful romantic outcome for myself. I can’t help but look back remembering everything more gorgeously and vividly. Good or bad I wish young people had the bravery to say the totality of how they felt. I want to know everything, the beginnings and the endings of all my romantic encounters and to a certain extent cinema provides me with that. I study film at university, but my love for cinema also runs deep throughout my life. I cannot help but wonder if my sense of expectation, my tendency to soundtrack and super cut romantic moments I have experienced are all influenced by my love of film.
My all-time favourite films have painted the most mesmerising portrait of love and created aspirations for the kind of love I desire. While it may be an unconventional love story, the film Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) is still one of my favourite depictions of love. It explores her quest and curiosity for affection, navigating the animalistic transformative feeling and the power and beauty it can bring to the everyday. It depicts the fine line between admiration and adoration. The mystery and projected idealisation of a person when you are in love. Amelie’s winding emotional quest as she falls deeply in love may seem confusing and hard to endure, but the simplicity of the true gentle kiss in the final scene seems to justify all of her dilemmas. Once again, cinema tells the story that all the craziness of love is worth it for the right person to kiss you on the forehead.
I wondered if, as young people, our disappointment, expectation or perception of love has been influenced by the images of love we have watched in the movies. To investigate this, I interviewed a group of young film students in their early 20s on their experiences of young love and how their relationship with film/media has influenced them. They are thoughtful, analytical and spend their lives deeply immersed in film. Every film they have ever watched, the ones they love, and the ones they hate, it offers a new perspective or impression of what love could offer them.
What is the most romantic moment you have ever experienced?
Film student 1: It wasn't actually with a boy. My most romantic moments are often platonic with friends. My favourite was watching the sunset over Florence with my friend.
FS2: Mine goes way back to primary school, my first boyfriend gave me a bracelet he made out of paper clips but in a Swarovski box. In adulthood, it was when someone got a reference from my all-time favourite films, that was a real connection. It just shows how someone can be completely wrong for you but it feels so right when you connect over the same things.
FS3:It was the first year of uni. I met her on the film studies course. It was the perfect date, a super romantic night at Winter Wonderland, doing anything we wanted. Followed by a Christmas evening in the pub. We didn’t stop drinking or talking for hours. We kissed in the street until our separate taxis came and we made our way home.
What is a film which has shaped your perception or aspirations of love?
FS1: When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989). The dialogue is so witty, a love which isn’t just superficial. Their connection is shown in the dialogue and how they bounce off each other, I like that.
FS2: For me, Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023). It depicts an iconic relationship. But really, it’s about this idea that someone is going to come into your life and make everything better. The feeling when you're young that someone really saw something in you. It really reminded me of a line from the movie An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009): ‘Everything was so boring before you came along.’
FS3: La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016); the idea of the right person, wrong time no matter how hard you try.
Does your relationship with film influence your judgement of relationships and love?
FS1: Concepts like love at first sight are ideas that I have learnt from film. I take these lessons and cannot help but impose them on my reality.
FS2: I am a hopeless romantic. I have the Charlotte York from Sex and the City (1998-2004) attitude that everything will work out in the end, with someone lovely. When this belief in me runs low, I actually go to the cinema to be reminded, it is a comfort.
I do believe that film dramatises things but, honestly, truth is stranger than fiction. I have observed and experienced more crazy forms of love in real life than I have ever seen encapsulated in film. I’ve been on dates where Girls (2012-17) has not even shown dates that bad.
I soundtrack my relationships. I love putting a song to something that you know is going to be a special memory. Maybe knowing it was special because it's the first time you felt a spark with the person, or maybe the last.
FS3: It doesn’t. I actually love films which shape love in a more realistic way. Films which are driven by human nature and the spontaneity of love. I reject the fake manufactured representations of love and look toward cinema which portrays organic and beautiful relationships like Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017). This is more of an exploration of human nature. But honestly, I think it’s not a bad thing to have romantic expectations.
Do you find it is old or modern-day films which portray love in a way that resonates with you?
FS1: The 80/90s rom-com explores love in an age before life was dominated by technology, social media or dating apps. I find it so charming, the sense of connectivity, the sense of mystery. Characters perceive their romantic conquest by their own perceptions rather than shaped by someone’s image they project themselves.
FS2: Definitely newer portrayals of love. The 1990s onwards are the films where I say that is so me when I am in love.
FS3: It’s not about time, it’s more about genre. It’s true that older films hold some kind of romantic ideal of a different kind of love. But the rom-com is so skewed, a mass-produced narrative. The story of love at first sight has been so overused; it has induced an obsession in society.
As a young person in the 21st century, do you feel disappointed by love? Have you actually found connections or been in love?
FS1: I have been disappointed by expectations of romantic love. But not by my strong friendships or love from my family. It is not everything I entirely want, but it is more than enough.
FS3: I haven’t been in love. But I have definitely been close. Actually, when I was 16, my girlfriend moved away to South Africa. I still feel if she had stayed things would have panned out better.
Honestly, I am disappointed by my generation. When I look around at people my age who are constantly dating on dating apps, they are not actually achieving anything with it. Dating apps are fuelling a soulless cycle of searching and failing to see people for who they are. True love and real connection are so rare and it’s a really amazing thing. But it’s been too overrepresented in the media, we have it wrong and there are too many expectations.
Do you think that the concept of true love and soulmates is real or purely a filmic construction?
FS1: I’ve had some encounters which feel cinematic. But I don't think that soulmates should be restricted to romantic relationships. Soulmates are also platonic. I think soulmates are also our friends too.
FS2: I think that there is one person for you, if you are really lucky you might meet them. But it doesn’t mean that you will end up together, or that it won’t end up in hurt. There might only be one soulmate, but they can teach you how to hold the other loves of your life in your heart.
FS3: Soulmates undoubtedly exist. It is impossible to say if we only have one because they are real. There is a fine line between romantic and platonic soulmates because ultimately a soulmate is a deep friendship. I observe the people in my life like my parents who are so inexplicably intertwined and so incredibly happy together. It is someone who brings out the best in you, someone who compliments you beautifully.
These young people are perceptive and reflective of the world around them. Their hearts are open to appreciate and experience the people and world around them and yet young love is still a challenging dilemma for them all. Maybe we need to stop expecting. To ground ourselves in the joy of sweet simple times. To relish the moments of shared uncontrollable laughter, a kiss, the glimmers of connection that are reminders that the love promised to us in cinema does actually exist. Even if it will not be totally yours for now, it will be one day.
Edited by Oisín McGilloway, Editor-in-Chief
Comments