500 days of summer

The tagline 'It's not a love story, but a story about love' is really some kind of wordplay, or it's meant to say, the couple don't quite click. Btw, 'summer' is the BIT*H's name.

I'm glad the movie doesn't strictly follow a linear timeline. Nice jumps bring in interesting contrasts of heaven and hell. 

Summer's an oddball who's free-spirited (read:rash & fickle) and doesn't believe in love. It just happens that a sensitive Tom falls for her sweetness and eccentricity. Like any lopsided relationship-wreck that finally hits the iceberg, it either kills Tom or if it doesn't, makes him stronger. He survives with the hard lesson that fate is nothing but rare coincidence. The scriptwriter's sympathetic enough to let him live autumn after 500 days of summer. 

The story itself is nothing new, but I do appreciate the cynic & poetic handling of Tom's tiny little feelings that can hardly escape the director's microscopic lens. I'm also a little sad that his idealistic fatalism is transformed by stoic reality. Anyway there's always something to take away with. Even for that BIT*H who wakes up one morning and starts to believe in FATE. Bite me!