“You should know up front: this is not a love story, this is a story about love”

500 Days of Summer (2009)

Since I discovered the trailer in the first semester of 2009, I fell in love with this movie. “What a nice soundtrack,” I thought. We can listen to The Smiths, The Temper Trap, Feist, Carla Bruni (yes, the First Lady of France), Regina Spektor and a lot of good music that fits perfectly in the scenes. This is the first movie that Marc Webb directed. He is a music video director, and I think that can explain why the soundtrack is so good and diverse.

The movie is not a common romantic comedy, it is unpredictable and not just like so many others we can see everyday at the movie theatres. I’m head over heels in love with the 2 lead characters: Tom (Joseph Gordon– Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel)! The characters meet at work. He is a writer of greeting cards and she is an executive secretary. From there begins a very realistic relationship: one that we see and experience in our own lives, nowadays. The couple exchange intense experiences and feelings… but nothing is official, they are together but they are not boyfriend/girlfriend.

The movie is unusual because of the way they have sequenced the events. For example, in most romantic movies, the break up happens towards the end. Not in this film, though. In the beginning of this movie, Tom gets dumped by Summer and sees himself lost without her. We can all relate to this. Who has never got dumped before? Or dumped someone themselves? The beginning of the film is so different. The end of a relationship we know well: the number of words decreasing, the distance between you and your partner increasing and the certainty that nothing is forever. It is only then, when it is too late, we realize how much the other has always been a projection of our ideal love.

As movie critic Sean Axmaker says, the movie reminds the viewer of the famous saying ….”It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”

500 Days of Summer shows us what some people keep forgetting: every relationship is different. Each person is different. There are many ways to love and be loved. As the trailer says: “You should know up front: this is not a love story, this is a story about love.”