where art thou?

Today I actually went, alone, to a Sunday movie matinee: Letters to Juliet. A nice feel-good movie with a mere five people in the theatre with me. All those scenes of driving through northern Italy (sigh!) in small cars - vineyards, stone houses, cafes, food, wine, love (sigh!). It reminded me of when we drove around Tuscany six years or so ago in a small car. As I watched this movie it brought tears to my eyes - because I'd like to be doing it again (even though at the time, as my husband drove admirably and fearlessly, I had white knuckles most of the way, couldn't translate the signs and got frustrated. Road signs were simply not in my phrase book and most of them had important looking exclamation points! Attenzione! appeared often). Strangely, I was often moved to tears throughout this film. Beneath the scenery and the love stories and the attractive actors, there was a poignancy - loss, love, age. I adore Italy and Vanessa Redgrave (in spite of (or because of) her controversial political positions and activism) and was curious to see what Franco Nero (her real life husband) looked like now (oh, those blue eyes!). I don't think I've seen him in any movie since they were in Camelot together - back when we were all young and attractive and had lovers. One aspect of this movie - seeking out a former lover after 50 years - sort of fits what I wrote about a few days ago - the anticipation and fear of an actual possible meeting decades later!
     Another element I liked was the respect paid to older men and women in the sense that they were treated as fully alive, fully living beings, not relics whose passions have faded or nuisances to be discarded - all those wrinkles and gray hair rendering them less than detritus. Obvious, too, is the distinct difference between the way older women are viewed in Italy (and France) and the way they are viewed in the U.S. - and this is not just in the movies. It's real. As an older woman (beyond a certain age) I appreciate that someone recognizes that we are passionate, interested and interesting, spirited - not terribly different from younger people - we just look different and have been around longer. And in some cultures we are not invisible. Of course we don't all look the way Vanessa Redgrave looks at 72 - tall and slim and beautiful. Bravo to the director and the screenwriters for going all the way.
     This story was based on a book of the same name that recounted the actual tale of the letters that are continually being written to Shakespeare's Juliet by people all over the world for the last 70 years. Those letters are answered by the Juliet Club in Verona which is, in recent years supported by the government, in a building with a plaque that reads Lettres a Juliet.
     Still desiring more, I ordered the book (same title) written by Ceil and Lise Friedman which I will bring with me on my journey east  later in the week.

Giuseppe de Lampedusa said:  
all lovers play the parts of Romeo and Juliet 
as though the facts of the poison and 
the tomb had been concealed from them.