Oct 22 2009
Two lovers…or the best portrait of hysteria
I have just finished watching James Gray’s movie Two Lovers at home, curled up on the sofa after a heavy day of rain and work. While this might not probably go down in history as the best movie I have ever seen, I must confess I was impressed at the accuracy with which hysteria was portrayed in Michelle, the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow. I am not sure that the screenwriters actually wanted to design such a perfect embodiment of a hysterical heterosexual female (well, hysteria also runs in the L-world, let me tell you). If they did not, I would presume that at least they were well acquainted with the type.
The story is about Leonard, a charming and hyper-sensitive heartbroken man living with his parents after being hospitalized a couple of times following a few suicidal attempts. Leonard’s woes apparently originated in a former relationship that bound him to a woman he loved but was forced to abandon due to their condition of carriers of a severe neurological pathology, Tay-Sachs disease. After a while alone, Leonard happens to meet Sandra, a woman who seems to be ready to commit and love him for what he is. However, life is generous to our leading man and bestows him the gift of a peculiar neighbor, Michelle, whom he meets in the corridor one evening as she tries to escape a father that yells at her from inside her apartment.
The story unfolds as a simple tale of conventional dramatic impact, but I found myself astonished at the precise depiction of hysteria in Michelle. You see, Michelle is in love with a married man that is never there for her because he has “a wife”. Although he pays for Michelle’s apartment, one floor above Leonard’s, he gives her the lover treatment, which she obviously protests — hysteria is exclusive…remember this. Michelle finds comfort in Leonard, whom she obviously sees as a friend when all the audience can realize even with their eyes closed that he is head over heels for her, and he’ll pay for it. In all fairness to Michelle, she never really plays the seduction game to him openly, but rather in the hysterical way — that is, preferring to remain blind to the sheepish looks he gives her non-stop. However, completely in line with the hysterical mind, out of the blue she will call him in the small hours of the morning, invite him to meet her on the roof in the freezing cold, and then simply ask him what he thought of her married boyfriend, whom he met earlier at dinner. Does that sound familiar? To the hysterical mind, number three is minimum…two is not even a number. Typical hysterical behavior…let’s put good love to the service or our own petty interests.
Michelle’s selfishness knows no extremes, and she will not stop at anything…unless someone stops her. But Leonard won’t. Why? Because she is beautiful, young and desired, and Leonard wants a minute with her even if it means hell later, when he goes back to his room without having been able to lay a hand on her because he was simply there to help her get what she wanted — and that is not him, but his opinion of her boyfriend. Yet he wants her, like a desperate dog ready to eat the breadcrumbs that fall off her plate, waiting to be acknowledged at least with the leftovers of whoever had her before him.
That is hysteria, which the dictionary describes as ” a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses “. Fear and excesses, yes, but also absolute selfishness that blinds the hysterical being to anybody or anything that is not her, what she wants, what she needs, right the minute her mind tells her so.
Good movie to see if you are about to fall for the “Michelle” type and you want to have a chance. And mind you, the world is full of them.
