I watched Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal tonight. This film examines love in reality versus that which is presented to us in popular culture. The irony, something that the film drives home by the last scene, is that the “real” vision of love and connection is only itself a part of a film. I assume that the title comments on the fact that connections are raw — they are naked in that despite what we envision in our minds about the course that love will flow, it always surprises us in its unexpected currents and ebbs. Full Frontal runs the gambit between the ridiculous and the profound, but Soderbergh never lets the audience forget that we’re watching a film.
Film seems to define our lives, along with other popular culture. Indeed, I found myself wondering during the film what love actually is. Can love endure within such fickle creatures as human beings? As I have said before, the reason that Romeo and Juliet is the most romantic piece of literature ever written is because they die at the end. If they did not have the social pressures working against them, they would have ended up Mr. and Mrs. Capulet-Montague having to really work at keeping love alive through farting and boredom, fencing season, and poo-poo undies. The true test of love, it seems to me, is not finding it or starting it, but keeping it alive through the mundane. Would R&J have made it? I doubt it. Surprising that any of us do.
Soderbergh’s Full Frontal kicks this idea in our faces by making us contrast the love of film with the reality of our daily lives. Let me not to the marriage of dull minds admit complacency: love is not love which thinks it is a film, or bends with the romance to swoon. Oh, no, it is a trifling bit of worry that requires imagination and work to keep alive, something that most Americans do not seem to have. With the recent talk of marriage in the Senate, I can’t help but wonder if it is marriage that kills love: indeed, nothing seems to murder passion and desire more than the quotidian. How can we, a species of such limited intellect and imagination, ever hope to keep something as eternal (if we are to believe 2000+ years of popular culture) as love alive? Impossible. Better to avoid it.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Soderbergh’s morals anything of the sort; I am suggesting, however, that he posits that love is a fickle bastard that should be considered by the minute. Love is not eternal, but momentary, something that needs thought, agency, and imagination to keep alive and active. Complacency and comfort make poor bed fellows in a relationship. Are we capable of keeping long-term relationships alive and passionate? God, we can only hope. Full Frontal leaves me feeling “wow, what a cool film,” and “damn, how depressing.” How much of our love do we buy from culture? How much comes from the essence? Is there a difference? I think there is, but don’t ask me to prove it.
