Modern Love at the Movies: Our Favorite Oscar-Worthy Love Stories
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From The New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. And you might have noticed we're having a little fun on the show this week. On Wednesday, I talked to my colleague, Ested Herndon, about how romance and politics collide on the election beat. And today, we're going to hear from someone with, I think, the most fun job at the entire New York Times, besides podcast host. That job is movie critic. ♪

Of course, on Modern Love, we think a lot about how love is portrayed in print and in sound, but Alyssa Wilkinson spends her time looking at love on the big screen.

According to her, in almost all films, relationships drive the action. I think all movies are really about relationships. I mean, even if you think about a movie like Gravity or The Martian, right, the main character is alone, but it's a movie about them being alone, which makes it a movie about relationships, right? Like a relationship to self kind of story. Yes. And just the absence of whatever their relationships are, you know, you feel it and that's what brings the drama. So...

You know, of course, all dramatic tension comes from relationships with other people, how they go wrong, how they go well, what do people want? You know, they want to connect with other people. They want to marry this person or they want their kid to not hate them anymore or who knows? It could be anything. They want to like further their friendship.

And so I think often Oscar movies tend more in that direction because they tend to be dramas. They're usually about like people going through stuff. And that's also kind of our show, People Going Through Stuff. Yeah, exactly. That's us. Match made in heaven. All of us really are going through stuff. Amen. Yes. Yes.

The Oscars are coming up on March 10th. And when I asked Alyssa to give us her top three Oscar-worthy love stories from 2023, she chose the films Poor Things, Maestro, and Past Lives.

These are all films with really complex relationship storylines, and I'm so excited to talk to Alyssa about her picks and their wildly different takes on love and connection. Alyssa Wilkinson, welcome to Modern Love. I'm so glad to be here. I'm so happy you are here. So you are a film critic here at The Times. I am. Which is maybe...

maybe one of the coolest jobs you could ever have. I know, it's really hard to ever complain to anyone about it. Not that I have any reasons to. You're like, I have to go to a premiere. I know, ma'am, like a film festival, bummer. Are people jealous when you tell them your job? Well,

Well, you know, most people just want to offer their opinions of movies to you when you say that's your job, which is fine. Wait, is it fine? That could get extremely annoying. It's fine when it's friends. It's less fine when it's like a guy in a bar who wants to tell you about Wolf of Wall Street again. And that's exactly what I was thinking of. I was like unsolicited comments from people at a bar, like an uncle out of family reunion who pulls you aside and is like, you ever seen Godfather or something?

It's always that. That's so hard. I'm really sorry, but I'm also not because it's really cold. Yeah, no, it's an occupational hazard that I can totally deal with. Okay, so you clearly watch a lot of movies for your job. Do you see a lot of repetition when it comes to love stories? Like are there relationship tropes or scenarios that you see over and over?

Yeah, there are. And I think you often see them cluster around periods of time, right? So, for instance, if you think of kind of your classic screwball 1940s movie, a lot of times it's essentially a romantic comedy, no matter what the genre of the movie actually is. And it's like we have like...

the fast-talking lady and the guy who's, like, kind of suave, and then, you know, they, like, break up and they get back together. The divorce comedy was a big thing at the time. Or you can think of westerns, and it always has kind of the

the cowboy who's like kind of rough around the edges and then the woman who he's like pining for or saving or saving um and then you know you can move ahead in time and you see all kinds of different ones i think of two in particular that kind of crack me up so there was a period where all action movies were set up around the same basic idea which was that we have this like beefy dude who's probably like an ex-cop or something like that and um

He has to come out of retirement and save a bunch of people. But he always has a wife that he's separated from, usually a kid, right? And that has to be part of the story. It's so true. And you get the phone call from the wife like, John, I'm sorry.

I'm not okay. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And we know that he's a good guy because he had a wife who he still cares for, but also he's kind of a bad guy because they're not together. And the other one that always cracks me up in Saturday Night Live has done a sketch around this character, but it's the boxer's wife who's like, if you go to one more fight, like I'm taking, I believe the line on SNL is, I'm taking my kids and I'm going to my sister's.

You know, and they're always like from Long Island or from Boston and they always have like a really thick accent. And the idea is always like, this is the last straw and, you know, don't go to this fight. And then he goes and he wins. So these are like tropes that just repeatedly pop up so much that you know they're not organically springing from the minds of screenwriters. They're coming from studio executives. They're such an imaginative bunch. Generally, I think studio executives have a pretty...

boring imagination for what the American public is interested in, but it's also just like, oh, well, nobody will care about this guy if he doesn't have this in his life. And

And it's really only in the last, I would say, 10 or 15 years that I've seen more movies where there's really, like, no love interest. It's just like, oh, this guy, like, just matters because he's a person. And you're in the back, like, cheering, no boxers, girlfriend! A little bit, yeah, honestly. I mean, it's right to point out that, like, all these tropes you laid out are so heteronormative. It's, you know, the guy's the lead, the girl is the damsel in distress, and it's like,

And these are the movies that make money. They're tropes for a reason. You know, Hollywood is only very slowly waking up to the idea that other people exist and want to see movies, too. And that's really exciting. So, Alyssa, we asked you to pick three of this year's Oscar-nominated films where the filmmakers are doing something different.

or exciting or challenging or ambitious. Some might say they're doing something modern. Thank you for that laugh. Thank you. With how they're portraying relationships. And one of the films on your list is Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Can you tell me about the premise of the film? Yeah, sure. So Poor Things is a comedy about a character named Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone. ♪

This is Bella. She's an experiment. Good evening. And Bella is kind of a science experiment created by a doctor named Godwin Baxter. He's played by Willem Dafoe, and she calls him God. But she is progressing at an accelerated pace.

It's a very odd looking film. If you're familiar with the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, this is actually one of his more normal movies. Previous ones include like The Favorite, The Lobster. It's sort of this fantastical vision of kind of a steampunky world.

Victorian world, but everything in the movie is designed to make you feel a little bit off kilter and unbalanced. You just get the distinct sense that something's off. Yes. Something is clearly weird about this world and you're going to discover it along with Bella. Yeah. I want to dig into the relationships Bella has with the men in her life and

starting with her kind of quasi-father figure who she calls God, like you said. Yes. It's very affectionate, sort of fatherly. She is, in a sense, his creation. But, you know, he loves her, but he loves her in the way that he just loves a really great science experiment. And we discover that he actually was experimented on by his own father. So it's sort of this, you know, generational trauma or something we could call it, right? And

Part of it is because she is, so, you know, the movie is a little bit of a remake of Frankenstein and she is a little bit of a monster. And when we reach a point where she can leave and wants to leave, she's going to leave. Totally. He knows he can't hold on to her and she just goes. And to his credit, he's like,

great, go see the world, and then you can come back and figure out what you want to do with yourself. And Bella decides she's going to go on this adventure with this other guy named Duncan Wedderburn, who's sort of a pompous guy. Can we say prick? Yeah, that would be the way to describe him. He's played by Mark Ruffalo in a really amazing performance. And so Bella sort of escapes the control of God with Duncan Wedderburn. She and him go on this sort of, like,

sexcapade, explore the world type adventure. And at first it sort of seems like Duncan is maybe kind-hearted, like opening her eyes to all the possibilities of life. But things really take place

a turn. Can you talk a little bit more about the sort of progression and really the descent of their relationship? Yeah, you know, she sort of has no feelings for him, which I think is a very important piece. He's a useful character to be around. He has money. He has a body that she likes to be with. Yes, furious jumping, as she puts it.

And then she continues to just kind of discover the world on her own. She doesn't feel like she needs to be with him all the time, right? He takes a nap and she goes out and eats a billion pastries and gets super drunk, right? And that feels unexpected, too. Like, he is the person who sort of plucks her from, you know, her home with God and her very, like...

protected life and you'd think that he'd, you know, she'd fall in the sort of trope version of this. She'd fall madly in love with him, depend on him for everything. But it's so comedically the opposite. Like she is a person with no shame or really any preconceived notions of how she should be acting.

Some people actually described this movie as like a dirtier version of Barbie, which I don't disagree with. It's just like a woman grows up in an insular environment, leaves it, goes on this fantastical journey and starts to understand who she is or what it even means to be her. She discovers sex. She discovers alcohol. She discovers that the world is full of terrible things as well, which really shows us that

the central relationship in this movie is Bella and herself. But the fact that she's developing that relationship is driving Duncan completely out of his head. And she just drives him more and more insane because every time he does something that's designed to control her, she's just like, well, no, like, I don't, I do not wish to do that. And he can't deal with it. Cannot compute. Right. You know, you mentioned that

even though there are these very important relationships with men that in certain senses all want to control Bella or have her, love her, keep her in whatever way, the central relationship that you're hitting on in the film is Bella's relationship with herself. And I feel like there's this one scene that really sort of epitomizes her discovering herself. It's the dance scene. Yes. Yes.

So Duncan and Bella are at dinner at their hotel and she is hearing this music. And it's like everything else with Bella, where she feels something in her body and she just goes with it. So she starts jumping. She starts kind of making dancing motions and she's kicking and she's snapping her way across the floor. Everyone else is dancing normally. She is like quite literally marching to the beat of her own drum.

And what we realize is that Duncan has seen her and is trying to kind of save, I think, his own honor by jumping in and acting like this is all planned. And so she keeps kind of thwarting his attempts. At some point, she grabs him essentially around the neck and he's sort of kicking his way across the floor. I love Emma Stone in this scene. She is so uninhibited.

And your sad face makes me discover angry feelings for you. Right.

Become the very thing I hate, grasping... I mean, what you see is a man who thought he knew what his relationship to this woman is, and more importantly, to how people around them see him. I am the man here, and I need to appear to be in control of this situation. And Bella just has no use for any of this, right? She doesn't care about fitting in. Mm-hmm.

And she doesn't care what Duncan thinks. If Duncan stayed sitting in the chair or left the room, she would be dancing still. So this is not about being looked at for her. This is just her...

feeling something inside of her and expressing it on a dance floor. And why is that so unique to see in a film? Like, what about this is so... I mean, Poor Things is a period piece, technically, and so you would pretty much never see, like, a well-bred young woman doing that, you know? Thrusting? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if we think about movies about Victorian women, they're usually based on, like, novels of manners and things like this. Sure.

So that obviously is that incongruity is funny. But it also, I think, strikes you as shocking even in a modern context, right? How rarely do you see a woman portrayed in a movie who is exploring her own feelings and self and kind of the whole movie is about her developing her relationship with herself. And even though she goes through some tough stuff...

She isn't punished for it. We often see movies about male athletes, for instance, who are relying on their impulses, right? Or like male, I don't know, traitors who are thinking about their intuition or soldiers. And they're very physical and there's a lot there and they kind of are just all impulse people.

But it's still relatively strange to see a movie where a female character does that and doesn't get punished for it. It's a fantasy of liberation, I think. If anything, it's an encouragement to just go wild on the dance floor like Buck Wilde. Yep, I agree. And if you run into really good pastries in Portugal, you should eat them all. Oh my God, it made me so hungry. I know, I know.

All right, grab some popcorn, maybe one of those giant buckets of Coke and some sour Skittles. We'll be right back after the break with more of Alyssa's Oscar picks. ♪

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Okay, so Alyssa, we talked about the fantastical relationships in Poor Things, and now we're going to talk about the real-life relationship in Bradley Cooper's Maestro. This is a film about the marriage of Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montalegre. Alyssa, what can you tell us about this film and the relationship in it?

So Bradley Cooper wrote, directed, and stars in the movie as Leonard Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan plays Felicia Montalegre. Clearly Bradley Cooper is fascinated by relationships between artists. His last film was A Star is Born. That is a story about a tortured love affair between two artists, yep. Yeah, and Leonard and Felicia have this really intense relationship. They're a power couple.

Leonard is, of course, the famous conductor and composer for Broadway and film. Felicia was a famous actress on TV and stage. So these are two artists coming together. Bernstein also had relationships with men throughout his life. And Felicia kind of knows this from the beginning. But socially, he felt it was unacceptable at the time. And he...

hit it, basically, for many people, including his own children. Part of what's interesting about the movie is that it takes place over decades where his sexual orientation would have been completely not talked about and not accepted to a point when it would have been more broadly accepted. And the question is whether he can accept himself. And that's what this movie is about through their love story. You know, we see Leonard and Felicia in some...

really sweet, loving moments. But then we also see them in these intensely spiteful moments. They both seem really unhappy in a lot of the scenes. And something I thought was interesting was that the movie doesn't really seem to pass judgment on either of them.

the way the story is told, it doesn't make a side with like Leonard or Felicia. And I would say that's pretty rare in a movie like this. You know, generally you have to have a villain and a hero in most movies. And there's plenty of movies about partnerships where one of the partners is clearly like the bad guy. And this movie just doesn't really have a bad guy.

You know, there are moments later on in the film where Leonard is self-sabotaging with alcohol and drugs, but it's not like he's trying to hurt anybody other than maybe himself. And even that is something deep-rooted that he barely understands.

Part of what makes it so interesting is that they genuinely love each other. It's very clear that that is a real loving relationship between them. It is also genuinely clear that the friction is not necessarily coming from Bernstein's attraction to other men, but rather the way that he's handling it. She can see that he is experiencing self-hatred.

But really, for her, the main thing that upsets her is seeing him essentially sabotage himself and his career and sometimes the family because he cannot fully love himself. There's this one scene where you can really see this aspect of their relationship come to a head, and it's bookended by Snoopy. Yeah.

It really... So Bernstein's been on a bender and it's Thanksgiving and he comes home to his apartment in Upper Manhattan. He goes into this other room and discovers Felicia there. And he's, you know, been chasing younger men. He's been partying. Felicia has kicked him out of the bedroom, left his toothbrush out.

And it's very funny because he enters the scene holding up a stuffed Snoopy. Alex, who abandoned Snoopy in the vestibule? Who abandoned Snoopy? And she is fed up with him being absent, not just from their family, but also essentially from himself. Absent from his own career and from who he is and what his genius means to both

and the world. And they have a knock-down, drag-out fight. You want to be sleepless and depressed and sick. You want to be all of those things so you can avoid fulfilling your obligations. What obligations? To what you've been given, to the gift you've been given. Oh, please. Please. My God. And it's really interesting how it's shot. So it's wide, as if you're standing in the doorway watching them fight. How could I ever compete with the man that you think I am? Thank God I didn't think... And apparently...

Bradley Cooper shot it this way because he was remembering a fight he saw his parents have from the same perspective. Wake up! Take off your glasses! Hate in your heart. Hate in your heart. And anger. And what she means is, you have hate towards yourself, and you are not...

Giving to your audience what you think you're giving because that hate is keeping you from being able to essentially be generous towards the people who you're trying to reach with your work. But these two people know each other well.

so intimately and so well that they're in that place in a relationship where you know just what to say to hurt somebody, but you also know just what to say to make them see the truth. And even watching the scene, you're not totally sure which of those you're seeing, but you're definitely seeing one of them. And there's nobody in the world who could tell him this except Felicia. Yeah.

And then it's Thanksgiving Day and you see a giant inflatable Snoopy coming right past his window, which is just a beautiful piece. You love that Snoopy. But I mean, I get it. I get it. It's almost like the Snoopy is Leonard's giant wounded soul or ego or whatever you want to call it, just like looming large, floating past during their fight. Yeah.

When you are having a fight with a partner, it's obviously about the thing you're fighting about, but it's about like millions of layers of meaning and shared experiences and past years and other grievances and other fights. Like there's just the sediment, right? Like of a relationship is... And it does feel like this scene in particular does...

does such a superb job of depicting that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so many, so many marital arguments on screen, they kind of are there as like signifiers. So sometimes something happens in a movie and you know what it means because you've seen it before. For instance, if a woman vomits in a movie, it always means she's pregnant. That is so true. Right? So...

So marital spats on screen are usually either to show us that these people are going to split up or they're in a bad way of some kind or that they're having financial trouble. I don't know why, but those are the two reasons we see them, right? And apparently married couples just never fight for any other reason. But what we're seeing is not even really a fight here. What we're seeing is...

Like, it's not therapy, it's not mentorship, but it's somewhere in that world where he needs someone to grab him and be like, you're going to die if you don't fix this, right? It is a fight in the sense that they are talking really fast and like, you know, raised voices talking over each other. And that way it feels extremely real. Yes. What this really is, is a sort of like...

truth-telling. It's like holding a mirror to him in this way that feels much more nuanced than like, honey, you didn't pay the electrical bill. I mean, of course. Okay, so the last movie we're going to talk about is my personal favorite. It's called Past Lives, directed by Celine Song. It's subtle. It's realistic. I think it's

Absolutely gorgeous. Tell me about this film. Yeah, this movie is really hard to classify. It's something like a romantic drama, but not quite. Past Lives traces two characters, Nora, played by Greta Lee, and Hyesung, played by Taeil Yoo. They start out as childhood sweethearts in Korea, and then they lose touch when Nora's family moves away. Oh, you got me.

Years later, they reconnect on Facebook as young adults when Nora is a writer in New York and Hyesung is in school in Korea. And they sort of rekindle their connection, but as long-distance Skype buddies. I'll look it up.

When we meet them again 12 years later, Nora has a husband named Arthur, played by John Magaro, and Hyesung has decided to come to New York to see her, maybe because of her recent breakup. Your husband is always with his family? He's always at your house, talking to you.

And it's never completely clear what his intention is there. And I don't think he even knows, right? And at this point, it's, I guess, a love triangle or that's kind of how it presents itself. But what I love about this film is that when I describe that premise, you kind of think you know what's going to happen with this story.

And what is the thing that you expect will happen? So, you know, in a romantic film like this, you have the woman who married a guy and maybe they like love each other, but it was never quite right. And then the man comes from her past and like he's the right one and everybody cries and she goes off with him.

Haesung looks like the sort of movie star that would sweep Nora off her feet. I mean, I'm projecting a lot of my own... No, Taeil Yoo is an actual soap star in Korea. Like heartthrob. Like he's gorgeous. But then this movie isn't really interested in giving us like a passionate reunion between Nora and Haesung, right? Like what we get is so much more ambiguous. Yeah, so there's this scene where they've just kind of re-met up for the first time in...

you know, since they were children. And they're walking along the Brooklyn waterfront.

And what they're talking about is just life stuff. Oh, well, Haesung had a girlfriend and that hasn't always gone so well. And Nora has a husband. And they're not talking about it in a way where it's like, what should we do? It's more like just like normal things you would talk about with an old acquaintance. But they're very much charged with this. They're like sizzling with that unsaid stuff. You don't know what you're expecting as an audience member. You're watching people...

fumble their way through something that they don't understand and you don't understand. And when they finally get to the carousel and they sit down, and Nora basically says, why did you get in touch with me 12 years ago? Which is when he looked her up on Facebook and got in touch. And he was like, I just wanted to know what happened to you. And what you're not hearing is romantic hero, swelling strings, like, oh, this is the moment. And so I think at that moment,

you start to realize this is not going to be the movie you thought it was. But that doesn't mean that there isn't this connection. It's not to deny that the connection exists. Totally. And in that way, I think it resembles the real lives that we all have, especially in an age where the internet has made it very easy for you to reconnect with people who you used to know. I mean, I looked up someone from second grade recently and their name just popped into my head and I thought, whatever happened?

What happened to that person? And I was like, oh, they're there on Facebook and they're kids. And like, that's great. Happy for them. I'm just struck by what you're saying about the dialogue. If you were to read sort of the script of this scene...

I think it would read as very underwhelming. There is a sense in which I think more narrative tension is built because of that, right? Because suddenly I'm like, well, what is going to happen? I don't know why I'm watching a movie about these people. And I think that's like quite a remarkable story to tell in a convincing manner and be able to actually sustain narrative tension. The watching experience doesn't feel like a letdown. It just feels true and genuine. Yeah. And I think it's really funny because like the characters themselves actually...

actually say that if this was a movie, they'd all have their parts to play. Like, Nora's husband, Arthur, fully recognizes that he's supposed to be the angry, jilted, left-behind husband. Yeah. So this is a little after Haesung has been in town. And Arthur is just such a great character. He's so lovable. And, you know, Nora and Arthur are, like, in bed, it's dark. And Arthur...

sort of laughs. What? And he says, Oh, shut up. Yeah.

And the husband really is the stand-in for the audience here. He's like, this is so funny. Like, I'm obviously the guy you leave if we write this as a screenplay. This is the story. But he's right, you know, we all filter our relationships through movies.

Like, how many times have you been in an argument with your partner and then realized that you're just repeating lines that characters like you would be saying having an argument like this in a movie? Totally. I mean, after a breakup, I'm on the train. I'm listening to my music. I'm looking out the window. I'm believing I'm in like a sad cinematic moment, of course. Right. But a movie like this actually feels like real life to me.

And, you know, it's also like an affirmation. You can't live every life. You can only live your own. I love that. So the Oscars are on March 10th. Besides watching to see if Poor Things and Maestro and Past Lives take home a little gold, man, what else are you keeping an eye out for?

Well, I actually think in light of what we've been talking about, you should keep an ear out for the speeches that people give. And how they talk about the people that they thank because, you know, every speech is about all the people you have a relationship with. So true. One thing I noticed at the Golden Globes, Ali Wong,

one for Beef, which of course is a TV show and won't be up for an Oscar, but she thanked her ex-husband. Right. Who has been part of her kind of a character in her comedy for a long time. But it felt very genuine. Yeah.

And that kind of thing, I feel like as people start to think about their family structures differently and start to think about relationships even differently, that we'll hear different kinds of thanks happening. And like what a cool thing to see on a Golden Globes night, on an Oscars night. Thank you to the one friend from second grade who I reconnected with on Facebook. Exactly. I thought about you one time. Mm-hmm.

That's so fun. Alyssa, thank you so much for this conversation. Yeah, thank you. It was a real blast. Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Josa, Emily Lang, and Reva Goldberg with help from Kate Lopresti. It's edited by Jen Poyant and Paula Schumann, and our executive producer is Jen Poyant. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show was recorded by Maddie Macielo.

The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell, with digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nell Gologly. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.