Chapter 3
Old Flames Re-Ignited
It may seem as unlikely as lightning striking twice in the same place, but there is a solid sub-genre of first love or old love rediscovered. Reunion romances.
In Casablanca (1942, screenplay by Philip and Julius Epstein and Howard Koch from the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Allison), two people who had fallen madly in love in Paris years before, chance upon each other in the city of Casablanca in Morocco. In North Africa. In the middle of World War II. In the past, at the height of their love affair, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) disappeared suddenly with no explanation, breaking Rick’s heart (Humphrey Bogart). And they have to overcome that obstacle, that heartbreak, as well as the fact that she is married.
One of the aspects of reuniting old loves is that they have pasts, and therefore baggage. It is your job, in addition to creating these two people, to give them a past, create the baggage, and then find a way for them to get past it. Overcome that bulky, painful obstacle and rekindle the old flame. In other words, a reason for them to have separated that can now be forgiven. In this case Ilsa did it for the greater good. The world was in chaos and crisis and she could help, but not as a girl in love. She needed to cut that tie in order to do dangerous and heroic work to help the allies beat Hitler. The reason for hurting someone has to be able to be balanced against the damage done. In this case it does, and so Rick is able to forgive Ilsa and love her again.
In Coming Home (1978, screenplay by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones, story by Nancy Dowd), Sally (Jane Fonda) is the wife of a Marine Captain (Bruce Dern) recently shipped to Vietnam. To fill her lonely days, Sally volunteers at a veterans’ hospital and there meets Luke (Jon Voight), a jock she went to high school with who is now a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, and at the low point of his life. They weren’t a couple in high school, but they knew each other and that shared past opens a door to friendship that can blossom into love. It sets him completely apart from all the other damaged, pitiable patients in this forgotten corner of the world. It’s Luke. She knows him. This small fact can sometimes jumpstart the love story. In this case there isn’t baggage between them that has to be dealt with but their individual baggage. Her loyalty to a bad marriage. His overcoming trauma and a life-changing injury. Plenty of conflict to fuel the fire and carry the story.
Jane Austen’s Persuasion (filmed several times, most successfully in 1995 with Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root, adapted by Nick Dear) is a good example of old flames reunited. Ten years ago, Ann Elliot fell in love with a seaman but was dissuaded from marrying him by an older woman friend with too much influence over the young girl. Ann has regretted it ever since. So when the handsome sailor reappears in her life, now the respected Captain Wentworth, she is sure that he has forgotten her or if not, that he could never forgive her. They have to overcome the fact that she broke his heart, and since this is Austen, they of course do finally overcome the past. She didn’t have a worthy reason for hurting them both, except that she was young and foolish. The reason for the breakup does not come close to balancing the damage she did to both of them. So it takes more time and hard work to repair that damage and heal that hurt in order to be able to restore the love between them. And since they are both older and wiser, the love is deeper, though no less passionate for having been denied for so long. Nothing is taken for granted.
In The Princess Bride (1987, William Goldman adapting his novel), Buttercup (Robin Wright) lost her first love, Westley (Cary Elwes), the boy who worked on her family’s farm, when he went to sea and was reportedly killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Now engaged to a man she doesn’t love, Buttercup is kidnapped by this same masked pirate, and doesn’t recognize that it is actually her Westley, until the moment she pushes him off a cliff. As he falls he says the words to her he had always said as a boy. “As you wish.” She instantly flings herself after him and by the time they tumble to a stop in a grassy meadow in each other’s arms, all is forgiven. The pain of separation and believing one’s love is dead adds great emotion to the reunion.
The record for the longest separation from a first love might be Letters to Juliet (2010, written by José Rivera and Tim Sullivan), in which Vanessa Redgrave’s Claire lost her first love Lorenzo Bartolini. It has been fifty years since they saw each other, and Claire’s not sure if she’ll recognize him, or if he’s even still alive. Claire and her grandson and Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), the girl who initiated the search by finding a long-lost letter, comb Italy looking up every single “Lorenzo Bartolini” of a certain age in the land. These are a wide and comedic variety of old Italian codgers, none of whom Claire recognizes. The three of them are about to give up hope when her own Lorenzo comes riding up from the vineyards on a gleaming stallion looking, well, exactly like Franco Nero. It doesn’t hurt that we personally remember these two lovers as Guenevere and Lancelot from Camelot more than forty years earlier, or that they were a couple off-screen as well. Everything about it feels perfect. And fifty years vanishes in a kiss.
Within the Old Flames Reunited genre there is a sub-genre of love stories in which ex-spouses reunite. Most people who have been divorced, have little or no romantic fantasies about getting back together with their exes. But we still somehow enjoy these movies when they are written well.
Some of these are silly comedies and as my grandmother used to say, we don’t have to believe them to enjoy them. This group would include Seems Like Old Times (1980, written by Neil Simon), with Goldie Hawn’s ex-husband, played by Chevy Chase, showing up on the run wanting her to hide him. Even though her new husband, Charles Grodin, is the District Attorney. This is actually close in plot to Bird on a Wire (1990, written by David Seltzer, Eric Lerner, and Louis Venosta), where Goldie Hawn’s ex-boyfriend, Mel Gibson, turns up as an undercover FBI agent on the run who drags her into the action.
Bette Midler and Dennis Farina in That Old Feeling (1997, Carl Reiner directing a screenplay by Leslie Dixon) are a long-divorced couple who meet again at their daughter’s wedding. The loud bickering turns to bantering, which becomes foreplay, and soon they have run off together leaving their current partners and the next generation baffled.
In Mrs. Doubtfire (1993, Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon adapting Anne Fine’s novel), Robin Williams goes into Irish-housekeeper drag to try to win his family back. Not surprisingly it doesn’t make his wife fall for him again, but he does get to keep the kids in his life. You can’t always have everything, even in comedy.
In Noel Coward’s classic, Private Lives (his play was filmed in 1931 and again in 1976), Amanda and Elyot are ex-spouses and sophisticated people who just chance to have balconies side by side in a Riviera hotel on their current honeymoons. Inevitably they fall in love again, or maybe they always were with Coward it can be hard to tell sometimes. And they run off together, jilting everyone and having a champagne fizzy, jolly romantic old time.
The Parent Trap (1961, screenplay and direction by David Swift and 1998, updated by Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer) is a comedy from the point of view of 12-year-old twin sisters, separated as babies, who conspire to reunite their divorced parents. This is a popular kid fantasy and the movie and the remake both made good money for Disney. Whether it was two little Hayley Millses working their scheme on Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara, in 1961 (adapted from the children’s book and directed by David Swift), or the equally adorable twin Lindsay Lohans working their magic on Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid, both made us want to believe something that it’s hard for anyone over the age of 12 to believe: that divorced parents can fall in love again and live happily ever after.
The Philadelphia Story (1940, George Cukor directing the Donald Ogden Stewart adaptation of Philip Barry’s play) has Katharine Hepburn on the eve of her second wedding, ready to start over with Mr. Not-Quite-Right, when her charming and handsome ex-husband Dex, played by the charming and handsome Cary Grant, turns up to spoil all her plans and win her back. Without looking it up, I can’t remember the actor’s name who played her fiancé, so I guess you know who gets the girl. Again.
In more recent times we have had several mainstream Hollywood movies that take on realistic relationships and try to convince us that exes can be nexts.
It’s Complicated (2009, written and directed by Nancy Meyers) has divorcée Meryl Streep running into her ex-husband, Alec Baldwin, at their son’s college graduation and they begin an affair that shocks family and friends alike.
Let’s end this chapter with a delightful and charming reigniting old flames/ex-spouses movie: Crazy Stupid Love (2011, screenplay by Dan Fogelman). It begins with Emily (Julianne Moore) asking Cal (Steve Carell) for a divorce. Which throws him into a tailspin. He is rescued by a playboy and pickup artist Jacob (played by Ryan Gosling) who takes pity on the middle-aged nerd and helps him reinvent himself. And the transformation does not go unnoticed by his ex. Emma Stone is also terrific in this ensemble cast.
These should be enough to get you in gear if reunion romance is the game you want to play. Remember, there was a reason these people split up. You have to confront the past, take on the baggage, find a way to get past it, get over it, heal the wounds, and then make them remember why they fell in love in the first place. If you fan that old flame carefully with intelligence and skill, it will burst into a fire that burns hotter and brighter than it ever did before.