Amar

The masks represent their creativity and a filter to help them breathe only each other and not the toxic world outside their own

Either the start was slow or I let my mind run so fast per usual that after a point I thought maybe Esteban Crespo did intend the movie to be simple, beautiful and subliminal.

Amar, meaning Loving or To Love, is a Spanish movie based apparently on an autobiography about true love. The sentence has already crossed the cliche limit I am well aware. But get this; romance need not feel so cliche because that is exactly what is wrong with us. The film is about two teenagers, Carlos and Laura, who are 18 and 17, respectively. Most people define their story as intense, I would define it as novel. It’s just a fresh love, the bud of a flower, it’s all new and happy and fragile and so ready to fall apart because two wild youngsters are on each end.

It starts off really basic but the nudity and the “love making” happen to be very important characteristics of the film. The story progresses with Laura and Carlos enjoying the new days of their relationship and Laura’s mother often telling her to not feel so deeply about him or to not spend so much time talking to him.

Laura’s family is broken where her parents are divorced but seem happy with their lives apart because on Laura’s birthday you see a get together where her father is accompanied by his own pregnant wife and her step father, Pablo comes into the picture a little before this. We see a lot of understanding here, a lot of harmony where everyone seems content with all the changes they have gone through and everyone sort of even accepts Carlos into the family.

Everything seems perfect so where is the conflict?

There is not an unpredictable conflict in the film. It occurs when Laura tells her friends about her and Carlos’ pillow talk which makes him insecure and they decide to take time off from each other to figure things out. Here, Laura agrees to go out with another guy from her school, El Moro. Carlos was drunk and emotional so obviously he did not take the news well which made him want to stop Laura from whatever she was doing because he loved her way too much to bear the possibility of seeing someone else take his place. It all ends in a bittersweet way where they forgive each other and part ways saying they will always be a part of each other and that they would never forget.

Now, for some things that I noticed and would like to take with me to my grave.

This movie has been nothing different from most romances we see, it was just the storytelling that used different aspects than the rest. For instance it focused more on the routine lives than anything extravagant, it focused on people.

The title, loving, makes me want to believe that they just wanted to let us know that no matter what happens, the little bit of loving we get, keeps us going. The little bit of loving that is shared between Carlos and Laura makes them feel heights of their own story; the little bit of loving left between Laura’s separated parents makes her mother cheat on Pablo; the little bit of loving left between Laura’s father and his current wife helps them welcome their new born into the world and the same bit of loving helps Laura and Carlos forgive each other despite either’s stupidity.

There is a scene where Carlos is sitting outside Laura’s apartment, waiting for her to come back from her date with El Moro and her mother sees him sitting on the pavement and tells him,

“You really love her, don’t you? Both of you are way too young to be in a serious relationship.”

This, tickled a bone.

If the young are not supposed to love, if they are not allowed to love, then why are they supposed to know it all when they are older? Tell me who knows the right way to love someone. Who is teaching you how to?

This world, darling, is a cosmos of meanings where one derivation is not enough. We won’t suffice this way and we definitely won’t feel this way.

Apart from this, if I am supposed to derive some meaning out of their relationship then I would say they fought because somewhere in the back of their own heads society kept quaking that they aren’t ready for love. Who is? Who out here reaches the age of 25 and thinks, hey it’s time to suit up because I am about to be in love? These things don’t have a time or place. In the simplest possible way, my answer is, love is like death. You will never know when it hits you, you will never know the hour or the day and it is inevitable.

Some things that were not cliche were the symbols represented throughout. Laura and Carlos sharing their intimacy in a compact space near the elevator system showed that when they were together, they were away from the ups and downs of life, they were each other’s solitude.

Also, who even fights for love anymore? We are all very hurt people who are afraid to go down the same road again because we’ve been told all our lives that what lies ahead is not pretty. And these are the same people who are some casual vendors of optimism who rarely ever believe their own words. The movie makes you expect a hard blow in your face but all you get is a gentle landing which in the end, you realize you were laying on the floor since the very beginning.

John Adam’s last words were,

“Most loves don’t last, but some do.”

Carlos and Laura were most loves. But some loves that do last, they are the exact ones that keep us going. The little loving, that’s what it is. All we need to do is be brave.

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