On Truffaut or Love and Other Drugs. Whichever you prefer.

I was going to write a review on the film Le Histoire de Adèle H. directed by Truffaut, avec Isabelle Adjani. But there isn’t really much to comment on the film, except for the superb lighting and Isabelle’s acting.

But what I really wanted to talk about… is love.

I have been trying to write for days now, but it seems to be a word that changes meaning with the color of the sun, the numbers of stars in the sky, how many raindrops break the stillness of the waters. Changes with how many times wars show up in the news, how many little children ask for money below the traffic lights, how much trash is thrown into the sea, how many fathers lose their sons.

Love is written on so many cards, for so many occasions. Love is used to justify so many actions, so different from one another. Love for your country, love for your brothers, love for your children….

In our western culture we are not allowed to love more than one person at a time. If it is the sexual type of love, of course. You have to love your mother and your father, all you sisters and cousins, your friends. But you must never devote sentiment and sexual intercourse with more than one person at a time.

In order to make it less socially punishing, we have differed polygamy in time. You can experience love, and call it true love for that matter, with as many people you please, just as long as not at the same time.

And for some reason which is far beyond my comprehension, our western culture insists in creating fairytales on the big screen that always end with… and so they lived happily ever after. Just like Snow White. Or Love and Other Drugs. Take your pick.

Poor Adèle. She became crazy out of loneliness and obsession. The expectation that the first love must be the one and only love. Even though society has outgrown that 19^th century Romantic idealism, deep down inside, we still feel guilty at the end of a relationship, however good or bad it might have been.

Deep down inside, the child within us asks, why didn’t we live happily ever after?