Hope Springs

A 2012 movie. A good movie, not at all what I expected, but a good movie. In a way maybe better than I expected. I had thought it'd be funny, but it's very serious. Well, I guess someone could find the banana scene funny, I'm sure, but basically it is a serious movie. With two amazing actors.

Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) have been married for thirty-one years, but now we see them more like flatmates: they don't sleep together, but it's not just this. Arnold especially won't even hug her or kiss her. They barely have conversations, actually. More like two words top when he's at home eating. Kay doesn't want to go on like that, she feels lonely, she wants to have back a real marriage, so proposes a week of counseling. There's a place where this doctor Feld helds intense counseling that last a week. Arnold doesn't want to go, but she's resolute, she'll even go alone, so he yields and goes too. This doctor makes them talk about their relationship, and a lot about sex. Every day gives them a new task, like holding each other in bed, when to Arnold just holding hands would have been more than enough...

They try hard day after day, they both care very much but after a long time of things going the same way it takes time to change, but they manage it in the end. 

The ending is lovely. At home again, doing the usual things: she makes him breakfast then she washes the dishes and he goes to work. This time, we see that after a moment he comes back to give her a real kiss, then goes to work again. She follows him to the car because he forgot his case, and at the car they see across the road Carol the neighbour, and in their faces one can see they are both remembering a certain fantasy he talked about during counseling, a fantasy involving Carol, just like I was remembering that when I heard the name :lol: Arnold smiles a bit embarassed, and Kay plays non-chalance, then she turns to him and says "that's not gonna happen" and he laughs, and they kiss and laugh, and it was adorable. 

It's a brave movie in a way, because these years movie then to be frenetic, just like everything else. Like on tv, every show, every sport comment, always frenetic, loud, there's this tendency to believe that if they slow down a bit the audience will get bored and lose interest. Not this movie, this one is slow, they don't shout, everything goes slowly, and it's the only way possible. It's a movie made of expressions, esitations, feelings, and I liked it enough.