A Little Romance

If you liked Before Sunrise, if you're a bit of a romantic, if you admire Diane Lane, if you're easily moved by wonderful music scores (by Georges Delerue), I think this 1979 movie is a must-see. It's Diane Lane's movie debut (she was in Italy even before she made Under A Tuscan Sun) in which she plays an American girl living in Paris. She's bright, well-read, and brave, and when she meets a French boy, Daniel, who's equally precocious and has read the same books she has, they set off on an adventure. The plan is to get to Venice and take a gondola ride to the Bridge of Sighs where they must kiss at sunset when the bells are ringing so that they will love each other forever. Along the way, they get some help from an elderly gentleman played by Lawrence Olivier. Horse-racing, movies, philosophy, the Brownings - these are some of the little details that make an already lovely story more endearing.

It brought back more than just a few memories of the times I was in Paris, Verona, and Venice. There's nothing quite like the buildings, the bridges, and the streets of these cities. History, literature, art, music, tragedy, deception, beauty - I found a little of each even in the smallest of objects I chanced upon during my travels. Snowfall in Piazza di San Marco; autumn light in a quiet Parisian street; tiny cracks in the walls of the Arena in Verona; a night-time recital in a small church in Venice; a shop of handmade masks (the very one that provided props for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut); Giuletta's balcony; a cart of books along the Seine.

When Diane Lane embraces Lawrence Olivier goodbye, it really is a wrenching farewell. She knows she might never see him again, this aged man who helped her and her beau pursue a legend. What do people do with the realization that they won't see a place or a person ever again? They cry; they wave frantically, as Daniel does, running after a car on a busy Paris road; they promise to remember every little detail of their time together. It's terribly hard to say goodbye to romance, even if it's just a little one.