What is love?

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2005)

This is old Mike Nichols at his best. The theme of love which he treated so many years ago with a dramatic approach in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" comes back now in an apparently less dramatic way. What is love indeed and what is the meaning of the words "I love you"? Are those who pronounce them always convinced that they are speaking the truth? Can a man (or a woman) love two women (or two men) at same time? All these questions arise in this movie in a continuous succession of encounters and dis-encounters in a permanent sway between the same four people whose characters are superbly acted by the four main performers. This is how love between men and women must be faced in modern life and I can't remember now any movie where this conflicting reality is presented in such an authentic way. The most important feature of this movie is made by the dialogues between the protagonists. The sentences are short, incisive, bright and intelligent. Through them we can learn all about the characters and penetrate deeply inside their souls and discover their feelings. It's true that love and all the feelings related to it maybe the same since the Antiquity till nowadays. But modern times with all the liberties they have brought give birth to more dramatic events because it's not true that freedom of love has curbed drama down. On the contrary the more freedom the more drama mainly interior drama because freedom of decision and choice brings more responsibility and the correlative anguish. One detail: the faked cybersex scene is hilarious and reveals much of what human soul hides in its deepness even in what concerns normal human beings. I think that this movie will enrich your knowledge of the modern human behaviour in respect to love between the sexes.