Borak: What's Love, Actually?

As movies go, January hits you like a bad hangover. More specifically, for those single and foolish enough to over-indulge in the wave of feel-good romance movies that the Christmas season usually brings. The Holiday, The Heartbreak Kid, and Failure To Launch were but a handful of movies screening on TV and the cinemas, which, when watched back-to-back was enough to make you sick. Or at least find anything resembling a date from your Rolodex.

It also didn't help that being single, I took upon it myself to watch as many date movies as possible in the course of writing this column. I've had better ideas; that much was obvious to me as I caught myself in the DVD store mirror grasping a stack of date movies that included Good Luck Chuck, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry. The only saving grace, I wanted to say to the dyed-blonde Chinese check-out guy, was those movies contained the two hottest Jessicas on screen. But having caught myself wearing the same expression as if I'd bought Hot Feet 3, Asian Babes 5, and The Gilmore Girls' Seasons 1-7, I don't think I made a convincing case that I wasn't some slightly overweight saddo with a pussywhipped weekend ahead of him.

In any case, neither Jessica Biel or Alba turned out to be the saving grace for either movie. Mostly because they don't take their clothes off. Here's what I'm getting at: For all our free-flowing attitudes towards sex and dating, there's a puritanical hypocrisy that plagues this genre from being real and actually relatable. Each time I see two lovers fall into bed to rumpling sheets, fade out, and then waking up under an odd L-shaped blanket, I can't help but think that this separation of love and sex can only keep the date movie in la-la land, doomed never to grow up.

Or so I thought. While Good Luck Chuck didn't shirk away from showing the sort of carnal pleasure regularly reserved for soft-porn—the montage of Dane Cook humping several women was a refreshing take on the regular wine-drinking, flower-picking date montage—the rest of the movie was so lacking in imagination it might as well be written by a 15-year-old spewing out bad love poetry about his teacher. Similarly lacking was Chuck And Larry, in which the romance was merely a subplot to give Adam Sandler to rub his hands on Jessica Biel's well-formed breasts. Clearly, nudity wasn't the cure-all I thought it would be.

The best date movies, ironically, are those bold enough to break your heart. Sabrina was the first film that did it for me. Starring the the waif-like figure of Audrey Hepburn, you could feel she was going to have a tough time choosing between Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) and his brother David (William Holden). Both were assholes, but charismatic assholes. The modern date movie has no such moral dilemma—there's always the leading pair, the best friend and the vain ass. Not so in Billy Wilder's script for Sabrina. Even towards the end, there was no man to choose, no one to root for, and you knew that, no matter who she chose, it was going to end in heartbreak.

Along those lines, my personal favourite has to be Before Sunset, not least because it starts off by crushing every romantic notion within you. The pair—Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy—play two former lovers who meet up by chance, nine years after failing to follow up their one-night whirlwind romance. It's so achingly real that your heart breaks; Jesse (Hawke) is now married with a son, and Celine (Delpy) is in a steady relationship. Both are in their thirties, and those days of roses, poetry and proses are but heady memories. It's a hopeless romance of two real people who've grown up, and yet by the end of their 80 minutes of conversation, you end up believing that maybe love—the kind of sweeping, lightning strike love—could just strike again. Naturally, Before Sunset was among the first few movies I saw with the person I eventually fell for.

And that's what great movies should do—they should transcend, affect, make us swoon the moment credits roll. Realism is what date movies need, not the idea of perfection, as Kate & Leopold so appallingly proved. “He was such the perfect gentleman,” said my date shortly after the movie. This, about a duke (Hugh Jackman) who time-travelled from the 18th century, when the women-folk were expected to be docile, sexually repressed, and speak only when spoken to. I rolled my eyes, debated on how drunk Jackman must've been in agreeing to act in this movie, and by the end of the date, it was clear to me that it wasn't going to work out between us (the date, not Hugh Jackman).

Ultimately, a good date movie would do well if only it stuck to its heart—to give couples something to talk about, while hoping secretly within that their romance could one day realistically be like the movies. There's no need for perfection, outrageous plots involving time-travelling dukes or good luck Chucks. All it needs, cheesily enough, is love, actually. And a flash of a Jessica (Simpson, Alba, Biel) thrown in for good measure.

John Lim is so looking forward to February as Valentine's Day approaches, just so that he can make fun of more date movies.