In the words of the poet-tattooist Ed Hardy, “LOVE KILLS SLOWLY”. Worse than that, first love – if cinema is anything to go by – kills so slowly as to leave one in a state of emotional semi-vegetation for a long and uninspiring period of years. Failed love affairs have been a staple of cinematic history, and in amongst those first arrows of love and despair, we have that painful subset of films about first loves gone sour. With the recent release of Mia Hansen-Løve’s semi-autobiographical Goodbye First Love, which explores the intensity of emotion between two young people, we thought we’d chart cupid’s first disastrous arrows in film, and celebrate the beauty of young love, before everything falls into the perpetual downward slope into despair, resentment and eventually, raging indifference.
1. Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Set in Stockholm, Bergman’s film tells the story of Harry (Lars Eckborg) and Monika (Bergman’s muse and then lover Harriet Andersson), two young people in boring jobs who fall in love and fall hard, before rebelling against their family and spending an idyllic summer on an archipelago in Stockholm. Because sex before marriage between two consensual young people who obviously love each other is WRONG, Monika is punished by falling pregnant, Harry does the honourable, and both end up in a bored and frustrating marriage, before one abandons the other and leaves them with a child (hint: it’s not the heteronormative gender stereotype). Summer with Monika is one of Bergman’s most underrated films, beautifully celebrating in crisp black and white those moments of languor in love, and balmy summer days of sun, smokes and kisses. Harriet Andersson’s performance in this film is stellar, and expect to see her famous direct glance at the camera which was described by Jean-Luc Godard in 1958 as “the saddest shot in the history of the cinema”.
2. Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
My first unrequited love – well before the heady days of Aaron “hot-before-Bieber” Carter – was a certain John Keats, and it was for a fairly long time that I harboured an intensity of emotion directed (almost) exclusively at that 18th century midget consumptive and penner of some of the more beautiful lines in English literature. I grew up, I got my own boyfriends, I moved on, but Keats didn’t. He was dead. And anyway, he had Fanny Brawne. John Keats and Fanny Brawne (a.k.a. the Cher and Sonny of 18th century Hampstead) are the subjects of Jane Campion’s beautiful weepie Bright Star, which is based on his last three years and the letters he sent her on love, life and poetry. Jane Campion films their world in startling colours and unforgettable images, and Abbie Cornish as Fanny is spectacular, though Ben Whishaw does a fairly good turn as Keats in all his awkward, velveteen-waistcoat-and-tuberculosis effeteness. This is a beautiful film, but not for those of a sensitive disposition like myself. I haven’t howled this much since Bambi.
3. Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
In one of the best film adaptations of a Shakespeare play ever, Baz Luhrmann swaps Verona, Italy for Verona Beach, Florida, trades swords for guns, and Elizabethan ruffs for naff-looking ‘90s Hawaiian shirts. Clearly inspired by MTV, and with a naughty ‘90s soundtrack of such luminaries as Des’ree and Butthole Surfers, Luhrmann gives Shakespeare the shake-up that generations of quasi-comatose GCSE students were calling for. Romeo (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) – perhaps the seminal star-crossed teenage lovers in literature– have had as many reincarnations as Di Caprio has had weight fluctuations – most notably the theatre production and later film West Side Story. Luhrmann – possibly Australia’s worst contribution to the world of culture, rivalled only by Delta Goodrem and the entire cast of Home and Away – scored a surprising winner with this '90s/ Elizabethan mash-up of blank verse and basketball.
4. My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)
Proving that most painful love affairs occur in summer climes (see also '50s Swedish teen romance One Summer of Happiness and tedious indie flick 500 Days of Summer), My Summer of Love is a beautifully directed summer love story by Pawel Pawlikowski, which tells of the romance between two girls from different backgrounds: posh compulsive liar (Emily Blunt) and naive and lovesick Mona (Natalie Press). Both girls unite over broken homes and loneliness, and for one summer: young love seems to hold the promise of everything.
5. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
Based on the acclaimed 1993 book by Jeffrey Eugenides, Sofia Coppola turns the doomed first loves of a bunch of unnamed boys over the fateful Lisbon sisters into a lush, soft-focus film set in 1970s Detroit. The boys fall wildly in love with the emo Lisbons, but fail to save them from suicide. Doomed and unrequited love and adolescent growing pains (generally ugly affairs involving chronic over or under eating and daytime television) become a focus for beauty: think velvet suits, lace dresses, Peach Schnapps and awkward parties. Eugenides was right, it totally sucks to be a 13-year-old girl – unless, of course, Coppola’s directing the film/ advert/ cake display.
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