For the end of summer, today’s fine romance is the best teen romance ever: Cameron Crowe’s 1989 masterpiece Say Anything. It’s another film I can’t be rational about, perhaps because of its resemblance to my own love story; however, on frequent repeat viewings, it holds up remarkably well. I find it every bit as honest and sweet as it more lauded contemporaries by John Hughes and it features the best teen party scene ever. Plus, there is the beta hero glory of John Cusack — but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Opening on the day of graduation, Cusack (here, the “basic” underachiever Lloyd Dobler) decides that it’s finally time to approach Ione Skye, playing Diane Court, the smart but shy girl he’s been pining after for years. He invites her to the aforementioned party and for reasons that aren’t clear to her she says yes. They start dating, her family issues unwind, he stands by her, they face complications, they overcome them, and that’s pretty much it.

If you love Say Anything, it’s not for the machinations of the plot, which are few. It’s for the hilarious but realistic dialogue, the brilliant secondary characters played by Joan Cusack, Lili Taylor, and Jeremy Piven, and the music, notably Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

So grab your boombox and revisit the 80s tonight with Say Anything.

First, a short digression. When I was in labor, my husband read to me and what would do for such a moment? Only the most distractingly beautiful words set down in English of course: “The Eve of St. Agnes” by John Keats. In fact I very nearly named my daughter Madeline (though didn’t).

Today’s selection is Jane Campion’s Bright Star (2009), which features Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved. If you know anything about Keats, it is probably his premature death at age 24, so I think it spoils nothing to say that the film isn’t a romance in the happily ever after sense, but it is deeply romantic and astonishingly lovely.

The film opens in 1818. Keats has left medicine to pursue poetry and it’s going, in a word, badly. The critical response is mixed (ever heard of the Cockney School?) and he’s watched family members die from consumption and senses the disease stalking him. Then he meets Fanny Brawne. They fall in love and enter into a secret engagement lasting until his death in 1821.

Early biographies of Keats often point out that Brawne wasn’t beautiful and harp on their correspondence, arguing that she isn’t brilliant and accusing her of being inconstant. Campion is engaged in a feminist reclamation, arguing that Keats was the jealous, insecure one and that Brawne loved him deeply.

While this is important to know, you could go into the film thinking it entirely fictional and still come away with the same emotional impact. The score, the costumes, the performances, the muted, autumnal tones of the cinematography: every detail contributes to a powerful movie that’s at once elegiac and ravishing.

I’m not sure why it didn’t get more awards consideration, except that it was released in the same year as The Young Victoria, and evidently we can only handle one romance at a time. For me, however, it’ll be Bright Star tonight.

Today just hasn’t gone the way I thought it was going to, hence the tardiness and brevity of this post. While I go get a tasty adult beverage and attempt to recover, I leave you with today’s fine romance, Paperman, a Disney short film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2012.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx5d23_paperman-full-animated-short-film-vo-hd_shortfilms

I feel better already.

Do you have movies (or books or songs or whatnot) which, for whatever weird reason, you’ve seen a numerous times? Not out of a belief that they are superlative, though they might be, not because you’ve sought them out for repeated viewings, but through happenstance?

During my first year of college, I watched the 2000 romantic comedy Keeping the Faith — directed by and starring Edward Norton and featuring Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman — about twenty-five times. It’s one of those cultural artifacts that immediately evokes a time and place for me. It ceased to be a film; it was instead a wormhole.

Recently, I caught a few minutes of it on television and in a new context, it was defamiliarized. I realized that Keeping the Faith was actually a very charming and successful rom-com, and thus it’s this week’s selection.

Norton and Stiller are childhood best friends who, stop me if you’ve heard this one, grow up to become a priest and a rabbi. They’re leading their congregations and dealing with structural conservatism against the changes they want to implement. In Stiller’s case, he’s also weathering pressure to get married. Enter Elfman — the third member of their trio — who’s grown up, become a high-powered business woman, and turned beautiful. A love triangle ensues.

What makes the film better than the average rom-com of the period is, first, it’s warmth and gentleness and, second, the extent to which it represents its characters inner lives. Elfman’s non-Jewishness is a big deal for Stiller; Norton undergoes a crisis of faith based on his attraction: this is not the stuff of the average Hollywood movie. While I wouldn’t say it’s serious by any stretch of the imagination, the characters are far more three-dimensional than is generally the case.

Now some of the humor comes from cultural and religious stereotypes, which occasionally grate, but any time the film is dealing with the genuine friendship and affection between the trio, it’s on solid ground. While I knew that Norton could be a great actor, the film also proved to me that Stiller and Elfman can give good performances with the right material. I am particularly annoyed on Elfman’s behalf that she never managed much of anything post-Dharma & Greg. (Oh, 90s pop culture.)

For me, it’s New York-style pizza and Keeping the Faith tonight.

Shakespeare is in the air this week. Everything I’ve read lately seems to allude to the Bard. Plus, it’s the height the Shakespeare summer stock season, that moment when for some reason everyone is willing to watch Renaissance drama and comedy. (If this disturbs you, don’t worry, it ends by Labor Day.)

I considered going with a straight Shakespeare adaptation, but my favorite “this is Shakespeare, isn’t it?” romance is The Philadelphia Story, which is this week’s selection. Yes, you read that right: George Cukor’s 1940 romantic comedy starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart is really Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to be precise.

Hear me out.

The basic premise of the film is that tabloid reporter Stewart crashes Hepburn’s fancy Philadelphia society wedding with the help of Grant. Grant is Hepburn’s ex and he’s trying to help her (sort of); mainly, he’s trying to win her back.

Hepburn and Grant are Titania and Oberon — the estranged fairy king and queen — but also one of the sets of lovers; Stewart and Ruth Hussey (who plays the Girl Friday photographer) are the other set of lovers; Hepburn’s kooky family are the fools; and alcohol is the magic. If you don’t believe me, check out the fourth chapter of Stanley Cavell’s classic Pursuits of Happiness for a fuller examination of the connections between the play and the film.

Even without the link to Shakespeare, there’s so much here that’s good. The Philadelphia Story has an astonishingly literate, intelligent screenplay, the central trio of actors are magic together, and the costumes are divine. It’s a film for grown ups and they just don’t make those all that often anymore.

I particularly love the difference between how Grant and the up-and-coming capitalist Hepburn is supposed to marry respond to her sexuality. The two performances of the line, “A wife should behave herself naturally” communicate volumes about the relationship between men and women. It’s an anti-slut shaming film and a surprisingly progressive one given when it was written and filmed. Smart and delightful, if you haven’t seen it before you should watch The Philadelphia Story immediately.

I’ve got it cued up in the DVD player and some champagne on ice. Naturally.