In 2004, the “New York Times” opened a “Modern Love” column, regularly publishing letters from readers about “love”.
These stories are either submissions, or commissions, or twists and turns, or plain and warm.
The only thing they have in common is that they all come from real people and real things.
People are moved by the sincere emotion in the story, and the column has been prosperous for 17 years.
Two years ago, Amazon selected the stories in eight columns to be adapted into the unit drama of the same name, starring Anne Hathaway, Andrew Scott and others, with excellent ratings and enthusiastic response.
This year, the sequel to the series returns warmly-“Modern Love” Season 2.
The eight stories are neither long nor short, each with its own advantages, but all of them are too long.
Related Post: Amazon’s “Modern Love Season 2” releases official trailer.
Therefore, I will only share three of my favorites here.
“Strangers on a (Dublin) Train”: Encounter
Their love has a romantic beginning like “Before Sunrise”.
On the train bound for Dublin, Paula, a blonde college girl, meets Michael, a programmer who works in technology at an advertising company.
They are not of the same kind.
Paula was a liberal arts student studying the Middle Ages, smart and venomous.
I will heartily evaluate every stranger who passes by, and complain that people would rather sell their privacy on digital devices than take the long drive to read a book.
Michael is a more “tidy and precise” man of science.
Michael has a quirk of having to sit in the direction of the train, and lacks interest in literature.
She advocates romance, and loves things that cannot be explained and that can’t be studied through a lifetime.
His pragmatism is supreme, and he just wants to learn the necessary principles and put them into work.
But on the train where they met for the first time, they talked so happily that they couldn’t hide their hearts.
In accordance with the normal process, the two will exchange contact information to deepen their understanding of each other in different places.
But the programmer proposed a more romantic and medieval way-
Two weeks later, we met on the first train at the station.
Betting that the feeling and trust in each other will not disappear within two weeks, and the fierce resonance of the soul will not be classified as a silent string.
If this is a story in a novel, they naturally have a fairytale ending.
But this story happened in 2020, the period of the outbreak.
You can see how the two miss each other.
One person left a message that she wanted to send to the girl in a mobile phone memo, and one person recorded what she wanted to confide to the other party.
However, the fact is that after two weeks, the epidemic has become more serious, and the blockade ban has been postponed and stricter.
They are not allowed to appear in places two kilometers away from their homes.
It’s not that they have tried hard. Both tried to ride their bicycles to avoid the blockade, but they were still stopped.
The programmer’s romantic speech was also shattered by the policewoman.
Both parties can only go home in grief.
Later, the programmer remembered from memory the street where Paula lived, and drove to squat guard. Can the two finally see it?
Unfortunately, in reality, the two are not in the same city but in different countries. The epidemic has prevented them from seeing each other.
Outside the play, Paula has moved out of Paris and lost contact with her
When we sing the romance of love at first sight, we will selectively ignore it. The newly born love is the most beautiful and the most fragile.
If you don’t invest long time to get along and communicate, your enthusiasm will be burned out soon.
But in any case, a heartbeat destined by fate is enough to stay for the rest of your life.
“On a Serpentine Road, With the Top Down”: stay
Some love has just been born, and passed away with the breeze. Some love sinks as a rock at the bottom of the river in the accumulation of years, and will not change with the scouring of the years.
Seeing the following dialogue, what kind of identity and relationship will you put in your mind for the two characters?
Cheating with a spouse on his back? Ex-couples who are still in love after the divorce? A lover who wants to end the relationship but can’t be cruel to make a clean break?
The answer is: auto mechanics and customers.
Stephanie is a woman who stays in the past.
The beloved boyfriend in college bought a beautiful blue sports car by saving money and doing two jobs, just to take her around for a drive.
They entered the marriage palace smoothly and gave birth to a well-behaved and sensible daughter until a terminal illness suddenly fell.
Stephanie lost her husband, leaving only an old blue classic car.
On the surface, she is not a woman who is addicted to grief. Remarrying, giving birth to a second daughter, life is still moving forward.
Only Stephanie knew that a certain part of her heart had stayed in place forever.
She called the blue classic car a “time machine”. Sitting in the car, she turned back into a happy woman traveling side by side with her former husband.
However, this car is too old and the family is facing financial crisis, and can no longer invest huge repair costs to maintain its operation.
So, with the support of the whole family, including her eldest daughter, she decided to sell it.
But leaving the souvenirs that carry the memories did not relieve Curran, but more painful.
It represents the happiest period in Stephanie’s life, who would easily sell his past.
I like this story because it raises an interesting question-
Can one enter a new life with others without letting go of the previous relationship?
If you ask this question online, most of the answers must be “no.”
Stephanie will most likely be reprimanded as a scum, and her current husband may be mocked as an honest taker.
People often compare moral standards and try to regulate others in order to maintain the purity of love.
Cuteness is inherently complicated and difficult to understand, and it can never be printed as type to define it.
Is refusing to stand still a betrayal of old love?
We understand from Stephanie that this is not the case.
She still loves him, and even drove that old car almost to death.
Is this unfair to the incumbent?
As her husband said, “Some people find it difficult to let the deceased really leave. They can’t let go of the deceased for the rest of their lives. This is the so-called love and sorrow.”
He said: “When I am with you, I know how much you love him.”
The survivor cannot let go of the dead is a manifestation of love, and there is no need to blame yourself for it.
Stephanie is indeed lucky to meet two men who love her so much in her life.
The stone sinks at the bottom of the stream, and the water still moves forward, but love has its poetic and timelessness.
“Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open”: Reunion
When two people who love each other meet at an inappropriate time, the separation becomes a matter of course.
Elizabeth loves her husband, but as the years get older, she finds that the other party still cannot carry her hopes for a better married life.
So even though she has two children, she still insists on divorce.
The straightforward attitude can be called a model of modern women, but after separation, no one else can come into his heart.
At this moment, she discovered that her ex-husband had changed.
The immature and unaccountable man in my memory now learns to make burritos by himself and remembers to put hot soup in a thermos for the children to drink.
Sitting side by side under the stage watching the children’s performance, the two people still have the same smile.
After having dinner together and talking about the past, they found that their love for each other was rekindled, perhaps never extinguished.
Until the man is ready to propose again, the accident happens—
Elizabeth was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.
So, all the rhetoric about courtship sounded into words of pity.
Elizabeth tried to push the opponent away again, but suddenly realized that this time it didn’t work.
The man insisted on visiting the ward, taking care of her two daughters patiently when she was hospitalized, and changing her dressing personally every day after she was discharged from the hospital.
She found that he finally became the man she wanted when she got married: patient, reliable, and capable.
Fortunately, after several treatments, the cancer cells were completely eliminated, and Elizabeth would not die in just a few months.
After going through separation, reunion and terminal illness, they decided to continue their forefront.
People often sneer at compound lovers, and regard returning to familiar things as a sign of weakness.
However, if love has not disappeared, willing to look back at his own faults, and clearing up the problems that had lain between the two, is precisely a brave performance.
People who love each other meet and part at an inappropriate time, and they may not meet again at an appropriate time.
The story in “Modern Love” is always like this. It does not use dog blood as a gimmick, but is true and delicate. You will see the reflection of your reality in every tiny fragment.
Perhaps it is a girl who is tempted by a close friend in her boudoir, taking the LGBT test over and over again, just to determine her sexuality and her true feelings.
Maybe you also have friends of the opposite sex who have maintained friendship for more than ten years, but the other party doesn’t know that you have long ago cherished emotions beyond friendship.
You can also glimpse many familiar scenes in the story.
When Paula sat opposite the programmer, she couldn’t help but expect them to be the next pair of Jesse and Selena.
When the girl Katie was in the toilet cubicle, she couldn’t control herself to kiss Alexa.
It seems to see Ellie push down the bicycle again and rush forward to kiss Aster (The Half of It).
When two poor people who were abandoned because of their spouses are sitting opposite each other in a cafe.
In another time and space, Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen may be sitting in a western restaurant, eating the dishes that their spouse loves (In the Mood for Love).
People will cry for the love of the protagonist of the movie, and these stories are originally the shadow of reality cast on the screen.
Therefore, how can we not be moved by “Modern Love”.
Times have changed, and it has become the norm for modern people to crave for love while fleeing from disappointment while fearing disappointment.
The biggest significance of this play is to give everyone the power to believe in love again. No need to deliberately pursue, and don’t deliberately dodge.
