173 Days of Anticipation

Sometimes a film trailer causes a tremor in your body like an electrical current; the images and sounds acting like a small stone skipping across a still pond. That feeling can be an almost extra sensory perception of something really special being advertised to your id and when it arrives it proves to be so ... or ...it can prove to be a false hope. That optimistic shimmer in my soul has happened a few times and has happened again with the trailer for 500 Days of Summer. This new film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (two actors I like an awful lot) was shown at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Here is the trailer (please click on the HQ option):



The images of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel both smiling, looking dour, the song that accompanies the images, the hints of a fantasy musical number, the shot of Gordon-Levitt strutting in pure happiness past an orgasmic water fountain, both of the protagonists running through an IKEA store like the Truffaut characters in Jules and Jim, the sweater vests and thin ties, the Godardian title font, the shot of the golden waning sunlight blazing behind a dirty train window and the sound of that oddly voiced news broadcaster-like narrator intoning his description of what these 500 days of Summer are like; especially his one sentence description, "This is not a love story, it's a story about Love." It doesn't feel like romantic comedy fake fluff. It looks happy and it looks pessimistic. I like that. And I'm hopeful.