(500) Days of Summer

or how to create a contemporary romantic comedy

It was 2009 when it surprised Sundance. I was waiting for the release in Mexico. I'm a Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan since 1996, when he appeared on 3rd rock from the sun. However, it was thirteen years later when he became famous, as this kind of antihero. Particularly, disguised as a cool and yet confused architect, searching for his place in this world.

But let's talk about the movie: (500) days of Summer portraits, with few but well-used resources, the story of a mismatched couple sometimes happy, sometimes not. It's also sad, and everything else that happens in a real couple, where all those in-between feelings appear; where not everything is perfect and even though, this imperfection provokes the spectator to feel close, vulnerable and identified with the subject.

Without being pretentious, 500 days of summer shows everyday characters. Where love, as usually, is well and bad played. But here all the good and the bad, depends on oneself, and the decisions one makes. 

This film is like this: it's not a comedy of love encounters, but a movie about love. I can't forget the divided screen sequence, showing the leading man two different realities at the same time.

Zooey Deschannel is the pretty, funny independent girl. The perfect girl. But, if someone is perfect, it means is perfect for us? 

If you have lived, this movie will make you ask yourself: Haven't you lived a relationship where you don't receive the same quantity of love you give? Haven't you been in a relationship where you would like to love as you are loved? Or yet, haven't you been in the opposite place, where you love unconditionally and, as much as we try, you aren't as loved in the same way?

1980 generation will feel completely identified with every situation: Search for love. Our social quest, Should I have a couple? Should I be successful? What are the expectations to be filled? How should I dress like? What should I be listening to?. And last but not least important, why nobody understand that I'm working in-something-different-than-what-I-studied-because-I'm-confused-or-I-can't-find-my-way-as-quickly-as-expected.

Maybe some of us, those who dangerously live around our 30, will comprehend every decision our leading man does -even when wrong- and some way, they'll know they have been on the main characters shoes without fully understand why things happened that way.

Compared for some people to Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind, received ovation in Sundance, misunderstood by English critics; I can only say is fresh, memorable and overall, contemporary.

Spanish version here