We watched (500) Days of Summer, as heart-warming and delightful a film as I've seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The story skips between different days from the beginning to the end of a relationship between the two main characters, Tom Hanson and Summer Finn, with each day numbered at the start of the scene. This was a cool little device, especially as they played around with it. Two scenes, far apart in days but similar in setting, are used to give little insights into the characters, like Tom's different feelings about the same memory of summer lying in bed, or his move from prodigously writing love messages to angry condolence cards. The shorter scenes were nice touches, especially in the midst of Tom's depression. One scene sees him yelling on a bus, and asked to get off. Later, there are two consecutive days shown in quik succession where he ignores his alarm; then a third scene, amusingly labelled 1/2 a day later, watches him leave a shop, unshaven, in his dressing gown.

What I really liked about this story is that although its about a failed relationship, it's not about a huge drama which ruins these two peoples lives. Rather, it says, simply, that sometimes relationships don't work out. This is striking in a film, where we are almost preconditioned to expect these things to go one way or the other: either they work out their differences and go off into the sunset, or their lives fall apart. For all the surreal moments of humour, the story here feels very real. I really liked the split scene bit, where Tom's imagined reunion with Summer at a party and the actual disappointing outcome are shown side-by-side. It would have been easy to have have the imagined scene stray into overly romantic fantasy: instead, the differences start off minor (Tom imagines a dinner party, rather than a gathering on the balcony) and the gap builds from there in a much more natural way.

Time isn't just a device in this film, although the careful arrangements of the different scenes out of chronological order adds a great deal. The main message is that life comes in phases, in episodes, and things rarely work out as planned because something surprising is just around the corner, a point emphasised by the final punchline. Funny, smart and touching. Oh, and the music is really great as well. Lovely.