I was really excited that Fox Searchlight Production, who brought us the complicated relationship of Tom with the love of his life in 500 Days of Summer, offers a new movie with another unique plot and I got to watch it in advance last September 14 at the Glorietta Malls Cinema.
Love is truly in the air as two couples got involved in the making of the movie. In a review made by the Time.com, it was said that in the movie, “there’s the a couple directing a couple playing a couple playing a couple”, quite confusing right? Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris showcased their skills for the second time with Ruby Sparks. The husband and wife tandem became critically acclaimed with their first feature film Little Miss Sunshine. Real-life couple Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano are the main characters in the movie. Zoe Kazan, the movie’s screenplay writer, plays Ruby, the love interest of her long time-boyfriend Paul Dano’s character, Calvin Weir-Fields.
Ruby Sparks is another proof that romantic-comedy films can still offer fresh ideas outside of the “boy-meet-girl” plot stereotype and give stories that men can also relate to.
It follows the story of a Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano), a writer who becomes a best selling author as a teenager with his first novel and now was struggling in writing another one. His psychologist gave him an advice to write about his dog Scottie. Inspired with a dream about an unknown girl, he wrote a book that centers about his “dream girl” named her Ruby (Zoe Kazan) and eventually, fell in love with the idealistic traits of the fictional character that he made. Things got weird and crazy when one day he finds out that she’s real and cooks his breakfast.
The movie is a modern interpretation of the greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. A day after watching the movie, I’ve even consulted my books about mythology just to make sure my prediction is correct. It is about a sculptor named Pygmalion who fell in love with his creation Galatea. Because of his undying love for it, he asked the Venus, the Goddess of Love, to transform his sculptor into a real human. But that’s the only thing that’s similar with them because there is no fairy god mother, genie or even a witch in the movie who can grant wishes- only love and sparks.
What I love about the movie is that you could learn a thing or two about the ups and downs in a relationship. Though the movie started off with fantasy and the reason how Ruby came into the picture was not stated in the film, it focused on the reality that we cannot control our partner’s decisions in any relationship unlike Calvin had.
In the movie, Calvin stopped writing about her after meeting her but when she started making decisions of her own in which he mostly doesn’t approve, he eventually “edits” her decisions because he got the upper hand in controlling her life. It’s really sick and we felt it while watching the movie.
Also, the movie was well written. There were few inspirational lines about relationships in general and few quotes for writers that got me saying ‘”aww!” and “yeah right. woohoo!” but I didn’t get the chance to write it down, so i’ll try to search for those in the net.
Another thing that I love is their natural acting. Zoe Kazan was really adorable and the camera loves her! All of her parts in the movie was definitely worth watching for especially her ability to adapt different emotions-from a giddy teenager-in-love, a clingy lover, a girl with the ‘in-your-face’ attitude, a manic-happy person to a broken-hearted girlfriend. Paul Dano plays another nerd-looking character but his performance in the drama scenes was really believable to think that they are only acting.
Aside from the sappy and love-filled scenes, another thing that makes this movie stand out among new romantic-comedy films is that it has few heavy drama scenes. Watching their drama scene before the end of the show , I felt haunted and blown away with the heaviness of Dano and Kazan’s performance and the musical scoring. It was really unusual nowadays to find movies where you could experience that. If my memory serves me right, the last time I felt that was in watching Black Swan which was two years ago, I think.
For those who want to have a great time watching a movie that is really worth your money, this is a movie for you not only because of the sappy pick-up lines but for the well written story and great performances made by the cast. This is also a movie that fans of the movie 500 Days of Summer can really relate. It is a movie that I could watch again and again and not get bored with it, I will definitely buy a copy of this when they release the DVD version.
Ruby Sparks opens today, September 19, 2012 in theaters nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.
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Our contributor, Alexandra Mari Leal, is a graduating student from Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) Sta. Mesa, taking up Bachelor in Journalism. She is currently doing her on-the-job training at Orange Magazine TV.
Alexandra Leal also wrote this month’s cover feature featuring Enzo Pineda. Follow her on Twitter: @IAMDLeal
