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Feast of Love

After my diatribe the other day, I decided it was time to watch an uplifting move about love and romance. Funny thing is, there aren’t a lot of films that fall into this category, unless you count romantic comedies. Which probably would have been right up my alley if I could find one I haven’t watched.

So instead I tried Feast of Love, a recommendation from a friend. I had no idea what the movie was about, although I knew there were some big names in the cast. An amazing cook who creates a feast to find love? No, that was Catherine Zeta-Jones in No Reservations. Hm. Well why don’t I just watch it already and find out.

Turns out I was pleasantly surprised, although it wasn’t as feel-good as I’d hoped.

Harry Stevenson (played by Morgan Freeman) starts off Feast of Love with,

There is a story about the Greek Gods; they were bored so they invented human beings, but they were still bored so they invented love, then they weren’t bored any longer. So they decided to try love for themselves. And finally, they invented laughter, so they could stand it.

Which in a way is a bit deceiving. I believed Freeman’s character was some sort of God in the film. Well, perhaps he was. It’s one of those movies that leaves you with more questions than answers, but not in a frustrating or bad way. More of a hopeful, endearing way that leaves you a bit breathless.

I digress, as per usual. Feast of Love is a bit like Run Lola Run (one of my favorite movies of all time) in the way the story is told, showing different characters’ love lives throughout the film. I’m sure it’s not the technical term for this kind of story crafting, but I call it the “spiderweb” technique. At first you have no idea how or where the writer is going to take you, or how the characters will all relate to one another, but you know they will eventually. And in Feast of Love, they do. Spectacularly.

Because of this, it is difficult to explain the film in any sort of coherent manner. Several characters weave themselves into each other’s lives through love lost and found, each one searching for their own relationship Utopia. Everyone is very human in the film, at times making the same mistakes over and over again because they just haven’t learned what they needed to in order to find compatibility. And Feast of Love really gets into the dark crevices of love and all of its permutations: young lovers madly and passionately head over heels for one another, infidelities that become more meaningful than sex, lifelong partnerships that endure horrors no one should have to bear, and the naivety that comes with seeking love with our eyes closed to anyone but ourselves.

Although I shed more than a few tears during the film, I also recognized a lot of myself in some of the characters. The passionate adulteress with an unhealthy obsession, the insular straight gal who finds herself smitten by a woman, for starters. And the feelings that resonated were even more compelling: the actual physical ZING when you realize the person you’re faced with has somehow touched your soul and seen you bare, the empty heaviness that comes around when someone you loves has passes on, and the red-heated fury that passes over your eyes when witnessing abuse.

Feast of Love was exactly what I needed to see to remain hopeful that love is a cycle, and my turn to appreciate it first hand is only mired by a bit of time, and I’m impatient.