Love On Screen | Video | wavemag.com.np

With an America-only opening weekend that grossed 27 times its budget, the independent film 500 Days of Summer is sure to be considered one of the most profitable movies of the summer.

Starring Zooey Deshanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it is a different breed of love story: it dissects a relationship in retrospect and examines the less than romantic aspects of love when things aren't quite as story book perfect. Critics are calling this the 'anti-love' romantic comedy and a movie for the 'Facebook generation'. While it is not likely to show up in Nepali theatres any time soon you can still probably find a bootlegged copy somewhere in Kathmandu. Although wildly successful, 500 Days isn't the first movie to break the predictable girl-meets-boy-feel-good romantic comedy formula. WAVE takes a look at some other movies that have portrayed the different sides of love.

Based on the book by Charles Baxter, Feast of Love is a montage of various relationships. A broke young couple trying to survive financially, the one-sided happiness of a marriage between a content man and a woman who longs for more, and the confusing debacles of affair in the name of love versus a fear of being alone, Feast of Love showcases relationships in a raw and real way. Unfortunately, the references to the views of Soren Kierkegaard, a famous Dutch philosopher from the 1800s, don't transfer onto screen. While the adaptation is good, there is rarely anything still in comparison to the book.

In one of his first big roles outside of his fame-making comedy films, Jim Carrey surprises us and proves he's not just a slapstick ham, but truly an actor in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the aftermath of a messy split, Joel Barish (Carrey) and his ex, Clementine (Kate Winslet) undergo a mind treatment that erases those haunting good memories that make a break up so hard to handle. With Eternal Sunshine, Director Michael Gondry created one of the most unique love stories of modern movie history.

Zach Braff made his directorial debut with Garden State, a film about two people who find a bizarre form of love as they both battle the struggles of their own lives. His mother's death has caused Andrew to return home for the first time in years. He meets Sam, a pathological liar, in the waiting room of a psychiatrist's office. The two unsuspecting people build an A-typical sort of relationship unlike anything else on the big screen.

Before Sunrise and its sequel made nine years later, Before Sunset, are cult films amongst movie lovers. In Sunset, an American traveller meets a French girl on a train in Europe and convinces her to spend the night meandering around the streets of Austria on his last night in Europe. The intensity of so many hours of good conversation leads to something a little bit like love. In a pre-Facebook and Google era, the two decide not to exchange contact information out of fear that it will ruin the experience. Nine years later, a book tour brings the two together for a few hours of roaming around Paris in the afternoon. They look back at who they were then and what they've become and pry the questions of 'what if' and 'what happened'.