(500) Days of Summer | Little White Lies

(500) Days of Summer

02 Sep 2009 / Released: 02 Sep 2009

Two people, a man in a grey suit and a woman in a white blouse, standing in an elevator.
Two people, a man in a grey suit and a woman in a white blouse, standing in an elevator.
3

Anticipation.

Murky. It will travel on word of mouth.

4

Enjoyment.

Best rom-com of the year thus far. Bullock and Reynolds, Butler and Heigl can go eat cake.

4

In Retrospect.

Have you seen (500) Days of Summer?

Marc Webb’s debut fea­ture is a step in genre and gen­der devel­op­ment that will be ref­er­enced for years to come.

Is this the best rom-com for blokes ever made? Direct­ed by a man (Marc Webb), writ­ten by two more (Scott Neustadter, Michael H Weber), and detail­ing the heart­break of anoth­er (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom Hansen), (500) Days of Sum­mer shows men to be as sen­si­tive, as vul­ner­a­ble and as roman­tic as women. And thus – genius! – it appeals to a female audi­ence too.

A huge stealth hit in the States, its oth­er strength is pure quirk. With a nar­ra­tive tra­jec­to­ry that is entire­ly non-lin­ear, hop­ping back­wards and for­wards through Tom’s rela­tion­ship with his one and only Sum­mer (Zooey Deschanel), it fol­lows emo­tion­al trig­gers in the same way that an over­heard song will throw you back into memory.

And it’s inter­ject­ed with sharp, bit­ter­sweet humour. Punc­tu­at­ed by a great sound­track. Pos­sessed of an indie sen­si­bil­i­ty. Stuffed with ref­er­ences to great films of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry (from Bergman to Hitch­cock). And laced with the uni­ver­sal truth that any of us can fall in love with The One, only to find that The One doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly see it that way.

If (500) Days trips ever so slight­ly it’s only because it could have gone even fur­ther. The end­ing nods in the direc­tion of the main­stream, strip­ping the film of the full courage of its indie con­vic­tions. But that cuts both ways – because the main­stream rom-com should sit up and learn from the brav­ery of this lit­tle brother.

Marc Webb deserves cred­it for cast­ing excel­lent and uncom­pro­mis­ing leads; for show­ing Los Ange­les as a town with an aes­thet­ic; and for his deft han­dling of male vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. And with that, the film pro­vokes our lurk­ing prej­u­dices. It is remark­able that Deschanel’s Sum­mer has been crit­i­cised for her insen­si­tiv­i­ty when, if the roles were reversed, the male would suf­fer no such dissent.

(500) Days of Sum­mer is a great film – a step in genre and gen­der devel­op­ment that will be ref­er­enced for years to come. And aside from all that, it’s real­ly good fun.

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