H&M t-shirt // Paige Denim Fiona flares // Gucci clogs // Old Navy fringe bag // TOMS sunglasses
In one of my all-time favourite films (partially because it’s so Euro in a Slim Aarons-meets-Fellini kind of way), The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, tells the story of a retired actress who moves to Rome with her husband – he dies of a heart attack on the flight there – and so, she moves to Rome alone and gets involved with a young gigolo played by Warren Beatty. I mean, within five minutes, the movie is already off to a fantastic start.
Looking at the 70s inspired photographs we took yesterday, I’m reminded of the muted aesthetic of the film, only heightened by the barren fountain in the background – a symbol of an expired youth, both hers and Paolo’s (Warren Beatty), that Mrs. Stone tries to rekindle one last time in the eternal city before giving herself to the murderous ways of homeless schizophrenic.
And I digress. My tenuous aesthetic connection to the film’s mise-en-scène, which I only discovered in post – a little cinephile verbiage – had me thinking about Mrs. Stone’s last hurrah. Is it appropriate for a woman to get involved with a younger man (or a younger woman) for something other than love? Mrs. Stone becomes a sugar momma to Paolo, buying him expensive suits and cars, while he keeps her bed warm at night. This blissful arrangement only lasts so long before the intricacies of jealousy coupled by only one of them failing in love (obviously the woman; it was filmed in 1961) begins to slowly chip away at that beautifully improbable ideal of it ever working out.
We all want something from our relationships that is other than love. Or perhaps we define love as a cumulative effect of a myriad of attributes. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Perhaps love is more about me than it is about you. I love you because you make me feel so young. You make me feel like spring has sprung. And so on and so forth.
We love selfishly, most of the time, and it works out when both people need what the other is supplying in order to feel alive. Isn’t that what we mean when we say: “You’re my everything”? That’s why it never worked out between Mrs. Stone and Paolo. She needed him more than he needed her. He needed her money; she needed his youth, attention, affection, presence, approval, loyalty and so on, to feel better about herself. And that, my friends, is something money can’t buy.
Is love just another commodity ruled by supply and demand?
