Why is it, exactly, that romantic films get such a bad rap? Not romantic comedies, necessarily, which have demonstrated themselves to be surprisingly dextrous in their appeal, but straight-up, swing-for-the-fences, irony-free romance, in which seemingly perfect relationships are doomed for no reason other than the fact that it is frustratingly tragic. Some of it probably does have to do with the fact that most critics are men, and thus less likely to be sympathetic to things marketed away from them, but that doesn’t explain away the defensiveness of women who make absolutely sure that nobody thinks that they have any Harlequin novels stashed under the bed. Enter Only Love, a two-part, nearly three-hour miniseries in which talented actors work their way through a situation that sounds like the set-up to an elaborate joke. The film has an almost disarming confidence in its mission, which may provide some insight into why the genre is so divisive: it goes for the gut at the expense of nearly everything else.
Matthew Heller (Rob Morrow) is a brilliant doctor with a happy marriage to Evie (Marisa Tomei), a woman with whom he was friends for several years before their relationship blossomed. Enter Silvia (Mathilda May), an old flame from Matthew’s past who is about to die from a rare condition and needs Matthew’s help. Flashback to 16 years prior in 1982, when Matthew was studying medicine in Africa with Silvia, and they were facing the possibility of a long, fruitful relationship together. But Mathilda’s father (Paul Freeman) disapproves, and wants her to marry a much richer man, thus uniting two of the wealthiest families in Europe. The rest of the world can’t be counted on to cooperate with their romance, and soon Silvia is forced to make a decision that will change both of their lives forever.
There’s a problem with film structures like that: they don’t work. Whenever half of a story has already occurred in the narrative past, it merely serves to reason that whatever is going to happen isn’t going to prevent the larger narrative objectives from happening. Flashbacks can be effective when used sparingly, but in the case of Only Love they take up just about as much time as what’s supposed to be happening in the present. Just like stories that your relatives tell you every major holiday, it’s already happened, and it’s not going to get any more interesting. But over the course of nearly three hours, it becomes clear that that isn’t the kind of effect that Only Love is going for. Love is all about emotion, and it’s willing to push out nearly all other nuances in favor of going for the biggest feeling possible (seriously, if you think that James Cameron’s last couple of works were weepy, you are in no way prepared for this). Its structure may not be especially cohesive or intricate, but it’s not designed to be: it’s only supposed to be strong enough to link together the ongoing bathos in a way that makes logical sense. There’s no rising or falling action; only an unremitting stream of big, undisciplined feelings.
Morrow and Tomei are both reliably charming, and May is appealing enough that one can understand how she can blow into somebody’s life and turn it inside out. They all have a good sense of how to focus a scene, and to bring it into a dimension that is both relatable and believable. It is because of them that Only Love is at all watchable, though one senses that far less skilled actors could have hit the broad emotional beats present here; indeed, it’d be hard not to. For the rules that it plays by, Love succeeds, but it does so by amply demonstrating why the genre seems to have more enemies than fans: if you can’t play the game, you wouldn’t even understand it if you watched other people play it.
Bonus Features
None.
"Only Love" is on sale February 8, 2011 and is not rated. Romance. Directed by John Erman. Written by Gerald Christopher. Starring Marisa Tomei, Mathilda May, Paul Freeman, Rob Morrow.
