Capturing the essence of a romantic dramady

Rating: 8/10 (1 October 2010)

Narrator: "If Tom had learned anything, it is that you cannot ascribe any cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence. That's all anything really is. Tom had finally learned that there are no miracles. There is no such thing as fate. Nothing is meant to be. He was sure of it now. He was ... pretty sure."
A great premise for a romantic comedy. In fact, it is the very essence of an audience's expectation of a love story and the film constructs it and deconstructs it beautifully, the above narration summing the film up neatly in the end, where we are left to ponder whether or not it was a happy ending. Does the boy finally get the girl?
For pure inventiveness of plot for such an archetypical genre, 500 Days of Summer gets an A, as do the performances of the leads. No easy task to capture the ups and downs of a roller coaster romance, the subtle mental and emotional dramas within a drama, turning and twisting on a whim or the simplest of acts, such as rejecting a hand that wishes to be held. I have a problem with the character arc of Summer which has a little to much pretzel configuration for the sake of making the theme / premise fit, but her dialogue and actions are real enough to suspend disbelief ... barely. An exquisitely well-crafted film.