I rented the new DVD release, "No Reservations" this past weekend. I'd seen it in the theater last summer, so I knew what I was getting into when I popped the disc in my DVD player.The movie, a remake of the German film, "Mostly Martha," is about a very controlled chef, played by Catherine Zeta Jones, who due to the death of her sister, takes in her niece (Abigail Breslin) and has to accept the help of a new assistant chef in her kitchen, Nick, played by the extremely handsome and charming Aaron Eckhart.
As I cozied up on my couch for the 90 or so minutes of this film I found myself transported, transported to a place where men are just...perfect.
Eckhart's Nick is handsome, funny, irreverent and caring. As I watched the movie I kept thinking to myself, "Why can't I meet a guy like that?" Well, there's a reason: men like this do not exist anyplace except in the brains of female screenwriters. The film was co-penned by two women - and I'm betting two SINGLE women who themselves would love to meet a man like Nick.
The problem is no man can ever live up to a guy who loves your orphaned niece (in case you have one), will come to your house and cook for you, is strong and manly, yet sensitive and caring, sings opera for fun, and never watches sports - not that we see anyway.
I am convinced that romantic comedies have made it next to impossible for women to find love in their lives because no flesh and blood man can live up to the images we've been bombarded with since we first laid eyes on Prince Charming as little girls.
In a column, "Marry Me!" in this month's Atlantic Magazine, writer Lori Gottlieb contends that maybe women should settle and stop looking for the Nick's of the world. She says if you've hit 30 and want to have a family maybe you should stop be so picky already and marry the guy you're dating despite his shortcomings.
I'm well aware that at times I don't want to just be in love, I want to be in love in a movie. I want someone who is that perfect constellation of wonderful attributes - kind, loving, strong, can lift heavy things, funny, smart, ethical, looks out for me - yet doesn't try to control...yeah, he totally doesn't exist, but he does on film and in books.
I think the beginning of my adult downfall was Mr.Darcy, Jane Austen's male protagonist in "Pride and Prejudice." In the beginning he seems arrogant and, well, proud (something very bad back in the 1700 and 1800s) but as he falls in love with Elizabeth Bennett we see this other side of him - the side swept away by love. How can any man ever compete with the image of Mr.Darcy walking through the fog, high boots, coat flowing behind him, to coming to get Elizabeth?
Yeah, I'm pretty much ruined for love now. But maybe I have to realize, as I work on compromising, that I'm no Catherine Zeta Jones either. Apparently it's just all one big compromise, but that doesn't have to be all bad. Especially if he will trap the big scary bugs and always knows the correct answer to, "Do these jeans make me look fat?"
3 comments:
Have you read Princess Bubble? This reminds us where true happiness comes from.
I haven't - I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the heads-up!
If we can learn not to ask the jeans-fat question, it will leave the men one less thing to endlessly bitch about.
Sounds like a fairly decent deal to me.
(Besides, I know when I've been and haven't been to the gym. I know whether or not the outfit is flattering. I know whether the jeans make me look fat or not. I don't have to depend on some BF's super-x-ray vision for that. Or maybe I'm just more tired than anyone else I know of hearing men bitch about women ad infinitum, ad ad nauseum, and this seems to be one of their "favorite" topics to come up most.)
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