Question of the Day

Brutally and remorselessly stolen from Mannion

What’s the last great romantic pair you saw onscreen? Mannion mentions Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love and Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man 2.

I have a special affinity for the Love Actually storyline between Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz (as was mentioned by Blue Girl in Mannion’s comments), and I really love Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State.

My favorite recent romantic pairing onscreen, however, is Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who reprised their characters Jesse and Celine in last year’s Before Sunset. I adored Before Sunrise, which was released in 1995, for so many reasons, not the least of which was how perfectly it captured the quality of conversation that happens between two people falling in love, as each introduces important ideas and thoughts, laying out closely-held opinions for consideration and carefully scrutinizing those laid out for the same. When they met again, ten years hence, and carefully and tentatively began to weave that pattern once more, I loved the characters, and rooted for them, all over again, as they strolled toward their mysterious fate. It was a lovely idea that Richard Linklater had for these films; they don’t appeal to everyone, but they feel very intimate and familiar to me.

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