Film Review: Valentine's Day

The new romantic comedy, Valentine's Day, is a rompish series of vignettes chock full of amusing stereotypes and clichés. Within the first ten minutes you get a glimpse of the bare legs and asses of most of Hollywood's hot actresses, but my personal favorite was the young starlet and country singer, Taylor Swift, playing the ditzy blonde high schooler who just can't get enough of her hunky boyfriend and the giant white teddy bear he gives her for Valentine's Day.

There is an ultimate scene of romantic revenge, in which the sweet girl-next-door humiliates her cheating wanker boyfriend in front of his wife during their fancy Valentine's dinner. And perhaps the most cinematic incident of the film involves an 18-year-old boy in the nude, his guitar, and his girlfriend's mother, but I'll leave the rest to your wild imagination. I also enjoyed that they cast funny boy Ashton Kutcher as a florist.

The moral is: romance can be charming, but love is messy -- love is torturesome ... and you're lucky to find someone honest who is enjoyable to be around for more than seven seconds, so grab on tight (and pray that their mother doesn't walk in on you naked).

A Screen Memory

My Canadian friend living in Paris usually dates people whom she meets through reputable connections, preferably at black tie functions. I was astonished to discover that she recently pulled a creeper move straight from my toolbox of 'meeting men' tricks.

She exchanged stolen glances with an attractive gentleman seated in the next box at the Comédie Française. When the curtain rose, she left her phone number dangling on a grocery receipt at the edge of her seat. He succeeded in noticing the strategically placed errant paper, and they exchanged text messages, and they met, and they dated. And they had long romantic lunches in cozy Parisian bistros -- and even longer strolls through idyllic Parisian parks.

But two months into the relationship he left his cell phone on the café table while he went to the toilettes, and it began to ring. She glanced at the caller ID to read the name "Poupée" (translation: "doll"; a.k.a. "baby doll"; aka "my baby doll"; a.k.a. "my other lover"; a.k.a. "my other girlfriend"; a.k.a. the owner of this iPhone is a Wanker of the Week).

Maybe true love is not found in random theatre boxes. But as Edith Wharton would tell you, the other woman definitely completes the scene.

Film Review: It's Complicated

The Nancy Meyers film, It's Complicated, is the story of a typical American family: a husband and wife have three beautiful children, they live happily ever after in the upper-class tranquility of Santa Barbara, and once the kids reach adolescence, the husband and wife are fed up of each other and go through a messy divorce ... then the husband remarries a high maintenance and physically fit thirty-year-old ... meanwhile, the middle-aged wife's baking career thrives (in the vein of the Ina Garten empire) and she spends her nights alone.

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin play the estranged couple still forced to see each other on graduation and wedding days. But they manage to take another stab at it, as they find themselves having a passionate affair, thereby turning the whole familial dysfunction in a whole new direction. Steve Martin is splashed in for the amusing romp, which includes an unfortunate incident between a Skype camera and Alec Baldwin's 'bald win,' so to speak.

No matter how Technicolor and Hollywood it gets, It's Complicated rings at the truth of divorce: for a while it seems tragic to all parties involved, but once people move on, the family can never go back to those fond memories of childhood vacations and cozy movie nights. The love is still there -- it's just different.

Chintz-Covered

At Kali Temple in Calcutta thousands of Hindu worshippers line up to give offerings to the Brahman priests, creating a scene of pandemonium I can only compare to that of the New York Stock Exchange. Women congregate at the sacred fertility tree nearby and pray for luck in marriage and pregnancy.

When my male friend and I visited the Kali Temple, a jovial Brahman priest gave us an unsolicited tour. He finished by blessing us with 'sacred' red strings and asking us for money. Then he inquired as to whether or not we were married. My friend replied that we were not married. Then the Brahman priest asked if we were friends. I replied that we were not friends. Then the Brahman priest exclaimed, "Not married, not friend, there is nothing else!" In India dating doesn't exist as an institution of ambiguity as it does in The West. Perhaps I should have joined the women praying at the tree of fertility and conjugal bliss.

"a reformed rake"

The lovely indie-chic romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer, tells the story of a male 20-something phenomenon: the guy who is desperate to settle down to one woman and only one woman. He is the prince in this modern Los Angeles anti-fairy-tale, instead of the emotionally unavailable wanker so prevalent in popular films and everyday life. Unfortunately, the boy falls for the female twenty-something phenomenon: the girl who is desperate to remain "casual" and never commit to one guy. She is the princess in flight.

The disarmingly disgruntled leading man realizes that he is not the prince to his princess. Romantic relationships are so often littered with this imbalance of expectations -- one person wants to have a baby, and the other person just wants to go to happy hour at a karaoke bar. You could call it "bad timing." But for the ones who want to have a baby, it's more like an extended mourning period of bleak wandering in streets that are haunted by the girl who liked to sing karaoke.

40 Thieves & An Engagement!

On a recent trip to Venice, my sister and I found ourselves eating one of the most delicious meals of our lives at Osteria Ai 40 Ladroni, or The Forty Thieves. It is an exceptional restaurant not only for its to-die-for squid ink pasta dish but also for the fact that it's where my sister got married.

There was a charming and virile-looking Italian waiter serving us. And my sister is famous for her Strega-Nona-like love of pasta, so she turned to me midway through the meal and said, "This waiter is cute, right? And he could serve me the most delicious homemade pasta, and he lives in Venice, a beautiful city." Since her horoscope had recently informed her that she would meet the love of her life that day, one thing led to another ... and before we knew it, Maurizio (as he was called) was announcing to the packed room of Italian families: "I present to you my wife!" Everyone was clapping and laughing and drinking limoncello.

Enough with the emotionally unavailable men -- here's to Italian princes bearing plates of pasta and seafood delicacies. Though Maurizio doesn't have an email address, he promised to do some email writing to my sister by way of the restaurant's office. After all, unfulfilled love affairs are usually more romantic.

Pimp of the Week: François Pinault

In terms of billionaires in the world, François Pinault is apparently around number 39. He is the ultimate Frenchman of luxury, owning Gucci, Christie's auction house, the Vail Ski Resort, and that sort of modest NGO-based work. But the best thing about this capitalist pimp is that he bought a beautiful old customs building and a marble palace on Venice's Grand Canal, and then he turned them into museums for his extraordinary contemporary art collection: the Punta Della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi.

His son, François-Henri Pinault, is married to Hollywood hot actress Salma Hayek. In fact, they got married twice -- first in Paris and then in Venice. Just for good measure. There are some things money can't buy (like marital bliss), but there are other things (like a Venetian-masquerade wedding reception, or a Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation), where a lot of money can't hurt.

Wanker of the Week: Apicius Restaurant Encounter

While dining on frogs' legs at Apicius Restaurant, one of the most elegant and hidden-away culinary delights in Paris, a mysterious man caught my eye. He seemed bored at his table of stuffy, well-coiffed, Chanel-dipped elderly relatives. After an hour of exchanging glances, I made an exit for the ladies' room -- he brushed past me in the hallway and I slipped a piece of paper into his hand. It was a perfectly timed encounter between two creepers.

Moments later we were texting, and a few days later we were doing the standard email writing procedure: he is a banker, his family has a house in Paris, he thinks New York is a wonderful city, he is not one of those 'emotionally unavailable men,' he is enamored of my long hair, and OH, one more thing -- casually, at the end of the email he mentioned:

"What else ???? I'm married (no point in hiding that !!)."

So maybe I didn't find true love at Apicius, but I certainly found a Wanker of the Week (no point in hiding that !!), and the chocolate soufflé was delicious.

Marzipan Mustache

When five French bachelors cohabit in a grand Parisian apartment, New Year's Eve is bound to be a debaucherous affair. I spent my first hours of 2010 in the company of a crowd of horny, sweaty, semi-elegant young Parisians (and a smattering of confused Americans who were passing through town). The dance floor was throbbing, the champagne was flowing, the silly string was spraying, and the handsome French boys were ogling each Parisian girl wearing a little black cocktail dress that entered their line of sight.

New Year's Eve intensifies the creeper-quality in everyone because of the societal pressure to ring in the New Year with your perfect love match (or else your next 365 days will be cursed with lonely nights of watching sitcoms stored on your TV, or learning how to cook for one).

In the hazy inaugural moments of 2010 a particularly convincing creeper caught my eye, and he doled out a series of pick-up lines, each one weaker than the last -- though my personal favorite was his mention of taking me shopping for bridal gowns in the coming weeks. He topped if off when he declared, "If you don't sleep with me tonight, then tomorrow you will regret it!" I was convinced that the contrary was true. It's funny how men and women can have such different impressions of the urgency of a one-night stand.

Film Review: He's Just Not That Into You

The recent romantic comedy, He's Just Not That Into You, was an unexpected burst of truth on contemporary dating in an age of Facebook, email writing, and text message disasters. Gigi (played by the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin) waits at the phone every night for her crush to call her. She fails to see the difference between a. men who are flirting with her at a bar because they are drunk, b. men who want to date her, and c. men who never want to see her again.

The manager at Gigi's local bar lets her in on some heterosexual man insight: "If a guy is into a girl, then he will make it happen, so if he hasn't called her or asked her on another date, he's just not that into her." Women often give bad advice to other women: for example, if a girl is desperately in love with a guy for a period of many years, then her female friend might say to her, "He's definitely gay, and that's why he's dating that incredibly masculine girl." Alternatively, she might say, "Men are like pears -- they have to ripen in a brown paper bag before they are ready to commit to the one they really love. He just needs another 2-12 years to really ripen!"

Gigi ends up converting the wanker-commitment-phobic-barman to a prince who is ready for a real relationship. Moral of the story: miracles can happen in fictitious versions of Baltimore that are populated by incredibly attractive people.