Love at first sight

Rating: 9/10 (27 April 2009)

"Love is an accident waiting to happen. Desire is a stranger you think you know. Intimacy is a lie we tell ourselves. Truth is a game you play to win. If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking."
(From the trailer of the movie)
Do you believe in love at first sight? It seems that the four main characters in the film do. As a result, Alice and Dan came together; Anna and Larry married; Anna and Dan had an affair. They met; they fell in love; and then came deception, betrayal and abandoning. It's the same old story happening every day in our life. Yet the film manages to capture something delicate, something we have been reluctant to admit. That is, the vulnerable and deceptive nature of love.
Love is an accident waiting to happen. Everything is so beautiful at the very beginning: in the gray damp city of London where 7.5 million people dwell, the eyes of two strangers met in the hustling crowd. "Hello, stranger" is the first word the girl said to the man. Then they fell in love just like the opening of every romantic story.
Desire is a stranger you think you know. Sometimes an intruder can also be quite innocent, just like Anna.This time two strangers again. But the romance came alongside with guilt and deception. Is it desire that connects two wandering souls? Nobody knows exactly.
Intimacy is a lie we tell ourselves. When the initial flush of love evaporates, what is left is a pond of still water, something we call intimacy. But intimacy didn't triumphs over guilty desire. So Dan and Anna have an affair. When the feelings are gone and the heart grows cold, who's to blame? Dan and Anna, or the vulnerability of love itself?
Truth is a game you play to win. Sometimes truth can also be hurtful. When jealousy and suspicion arise, mistrust takes over. Dan loses two most important women in his life. Larry took a successful revenge in the end and won back his wife. But for him, maybe it's only the winning that really matters.
If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking. Life continues anyway. Just like what's implied in the end, when Alice, or maybe we should call her Jane, walked down the road, looking straight ahead, we know at that very moment everything is in the past. Life goes on easily most of the time, only in retrospect we pick up those painful memories and smile. The next stranger is around the corner.