STILL nothing beats a dozen long-stemmed brazenly red roses for the object of your desire ? to signify your intentions for intimacy, to help express the intensity of your innermost feelings of passion.
But with the price tag on roses being what they are around this time of year, there must be some other way to well, get the same message across. You can get cute in an sms, of course, but that could just as easily come off as too crass as well. Besides, that?s so everyday.
If what you really want is to get her a-swooning on Cloud Nine, why not a gift of a dozen romantic movies to make this Day of Hearts celebration even more memorable? Watch a marathon of these lachrymose, la-dee-dah visual delights together on your giant LED screen (your place, or mine?), while munching on a box of dark Belgian chocolates, and sipping on a bottle of burgundy from crystal glasses. See if she isn?t resting her head on your shoulder soon?
1. ?Moulin Rouge!? Directed by Baz Luhrmann (2001). Set in turn-of-the-20th century Paris where starving artistes and writers rent out derelict attics atop the district of tres, tres grungy Montmartre and cavort in real or imagined worlds of truth, beauty, freedom, love. The ideals of la vie Boheme, very tongue-in-chic, romantic, tragic. The lovers Christian, dreamy-eyed poet, and Satine, belle of the bordello/dance club Moulin Rouge, struggle to keep their love affair secret amidst a gossipy, hostile environment.
Kilig kitsch line: ?Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!?
2. ?Love in the Time of Cholera? Directed by Mike Newell (2007). Much of Gabriel Garcia Marquez? novel of the same title loses its literary luster ("turgid and lifeless,? pans a critic) in its film translation. For the non-book reader, it still is yummy cardio eye candy. A narrative of a love triangle set in the port town of Cartagena, Colombia that spans 50 long years, from 1880 to 1930! Love, passion, betrayal and anger rule in almost equal parts the lives of Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza and Juvenal Urbino.
Kilig kitsch line: ?There is no greater glory than to die for love.?
3. ?Memoirs of a Geisha? Directed by Rob Marshall (2005). A film adaptation of Arthur Golden?s bestseller of the same title, it won three of six Academy Award nominations: best cinematography, best art direction and best costume design. It opens with the scene of a nine-year old girl sold by her parents for servitude in Japan?s Showa Era. Chiyo grows up to be Sayuri, the most famous geisha in all of Kyoto, who silently harbors a love for the Chairman for 15 years.
Kilig kitsch line: ?At the temple, there is a poem called ?Loss,? carved into the stone. It has three words?but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read ?loss?? only feel it.?
4. ?Romeo + Juliet? Directed by Baz Luhrmann (1996). Reputed to be William Shakespeare?s most screen-played work, this latest film reincarnation is ?rambunctious, sexy, violent, entertaining.? The Gen X/MTV-targeted oeuvre, the director says,? is the way the theater public ? from the street sweeper to the Queen of England ?may have enjoyed it in Elizabethan times in England. Dramatic cuts and extreme close-ups are used in the finale at the cathedral when Juliet comes to beside her dead Romeo ? creating a cinematic tension nearly impossible to achieve on stage.
Kilig kitch line: ?My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have? for both are infinite.?
5. ?Bram Stoker?s Dracula? Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). ?Everyone knows Dracula has a heart. Coppola knows it?s not just an organ you drive a stake into. To the director, the Count is a restless spirit who has been condemned for too many years to interment in so many cruddy films. This luscious film restores the creature?s nobility and brings him peace.? One critic offers a plausible explanation of why this vampire movie has broken box-office records, inspired a video game, a board game, collectible cards, action figures and model sets. Well, you?ll just have to take the film poster?s blurb to heart: ?Love never dies.? Dig?
Kilig kitsch line: ?I have crossed oceans of time to find you.?
6. ?The Sheltering Sky? Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (1990). Paul Bowles? film adaptation of his book is about sliding over the edge into oblivion, but going in style? ?A long, beautifully modulated cry of despair,? a New York Times critic acclaims. Exotic interplays with the erotic. North Africa?s profoundly piercing heat is turned up volumes as New Yorkers Port Moresby, a composer who no longer composes, his wife Kit who wrote a Broadway play which received unenthusiastic reviews, and their friend George Tunner, a bon vivant who throws parties in Long Island for a living, arrive in Tangier, Morocco, shortly after the Second World War, and travel deep, deep inside the secrets of the Sahara.
Kilig kitsch line: ?Tourists merely pass through on a fixed schedule, always to return some place other. Travelers move at their own speed, as the mood dictates. Travelers need never return.?
7. ?Last Tango in Paris? Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (1972). One of the classic European art movies of that decade, Last Tango created a sexually-charged, emotionally tangled dance of hatred, bitterness, blackmail, mortality and despair. Not at all a pretty, roses and lollipops flick, having been banned temporarily in several US cities when it was released in the already permissive ?70s. The legendary Marlon Brando plays Paul, a middle-aged American, who comes to Paris on an emotional exile when his estranged wife commits suicide. A chance meeting with Jeanne, a young Frenchwoman played by ingénue Maria Schneider, leads to a raw, outrageous, sadomasochistic relationship.
Kilig kitsch line (attributed to Bertolucci, the director): ?There?s nothing more egoistic than love.?
8. ?Love Story? Directed by Arthur Hiller (1970). Considered one of the most romantic movies in modern times, this tragic drama is from Erich Segal?s novel of the same title. Oliver Barrett IV comes from a wealthy, well-respected, Harvard-bred family. He meets and falls in love with Jennifer Cavelleri, a working class, quick-witted Radcliffe College student. The two decide to marry upon graduation from college, against Oliver?s father?s wishes, and he severs ties with his son. The couple struggles to pay for Oliver?s Harvard Law School, with Jenny working as a private school teacher. Her death by leukemia brings Oliver and his father together again ? as highlighted at the end of the novel, bringing out the double meaning of the title ?Love Story.?
Kilig kitsch line: ?Love means never having to say you?re sorry.?
9. ?Titanic? Directed by James Cameron (1997). The director?s magnificent $200M work, with gross earnings of $1.6B, is the first spectacle in decades, ?a spectacle as sweeping as the sea,? that ?honestly invites comparison to ?Gone with the Wind,?? so screams one of the press feats churned out by the publicity mill. Two people of two different social classes, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, meet and fall in love aboard the ill-fated ship on its maiden voyage. A fictional love story with a fastidious overlay of real-life tragedy? And above all, the lesson that life is uncertain, the future unknowable, and the unthinkable possible.
Kilig kitsch line: ?I?m the king of the world!?
10. ?Cleopatra? Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz (1969). Fraught with imperishable romance, adventure and tragedy, this historic piece of epic proportions plays out human drama also on a grand and noble scale. The life of this ancient Egyptian queen has fired the imaginations of poets and playwrights through the centuries, among them W Shakespeare and G.B. Shaw. After all, her private/romantic and public/socio-political relationships with two of Rome?s most powerful figures, Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, affected the destiny of the world. There may be truth to the rumor that Cleopatra made Elizabeth Taylor the Hollywood legend she is.
Kilig kitsch line: ?You should attack my guards more often. Battle seems to become you.?
11. ?Fatal Attraction? Directed by Adrian Lyne (1987). A thriller of a different kind of love story. It made American men think twice before even considering infidelity in their marriage. Daniel Gallagher, a successful, happily married attorney, has a wild weekend affair with Alex Forrester, a powerful publishing company editor. What he thought would be just a fling balloons into a huge nightmare when the woman-scorned starts to cling. Glenn Close, the actress who played the erotomaniac, had men walking up to her saying, ?You scared the shit out of me? years after.
Kilig kitsch line: ?Well, what am I supposed to do? You won?t answer my calls, you change your number. I?m not going to be ignored, Dan!?
12. ?Total Eclipse? Directed by Agnieszka Holland (1995). Then much-younger movie heartthrob Leonardo di Caprio plays the wild, self-indulgent and eccentric 16-year-old Arthur Rimbaud, the other half of a passionate, violent, itinerant relationship. David Thewlis is the older, mild-mannered, bourgeois Paul Verlaine. Based on a 1967 play by Christopher Hampton (who also wrote the screenplay), it presents a historically accurate account of the two 19th century French poets? travels and travails. The film makes good use of a pastiche of poems and letters to characterize the important age of the Symbolist movement in Europe.
Kilig kitsch line from Arthur Rimbaud?s poem: ?The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ear/ The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back/ The sea has broken russet at your vermillion nipples/ And Man bled black at your royal sides.? ?
