So lovely, looks gorgeous, hysterical, and gets at some of the weird shit that happens in relationships, both sensual and disgusting in ways I haven’t really seen before. I also haven’t seen something nail something so specific as being in a long-distance relationship, visiting your partner, who you haven’t seen, and being so pent up with anticipation and realizing immediately that it’s over. Then having to spend an entire vacation with a person that you’ve completely fallen out of love with, hadn’t realized it until the second you saw them, and lie to yourself and them about what you’re feeling. Or at least that’s how I took it! The beauty of this is that there are many ways to read it.

One thing that this did for me, personally, was contextualize a bitterness that I’ve held with me about my own experience like this. I’m happily in a much better and healthier relationship now, but there’s always a sense that follows a bad breakup, particularly a long-distance relationship, that you were wronged. That it wasn’t you who changed, it was them. There are many things I can’t reconcile about that particular chapter in my life, but one thing this helped me understand was that while I was living my own separate life on the other side of the country, so were they. The sense that it’s over hit because we both felt it, and likely had been for a long time. Seeing each other didn’t change it; it only reinforced it.

Anywho, movies can act as therapy. Who knew?

Shaun’s the real deal, and this one’s special.