RBL: The Art of Leaving

When I was on the grueling flight to America - stuffed between two people and trying to control my want to fall asleep - I began thinking about the art of leaving people. (This is a common thought process in my mind.) As the theme for my fiction folder is guilt - mainly guilt in relationships - I thought about other forms of art that dealt with leaving, betrayal, romantic fuck-ups in other words. And so became the title for my latest blog - RBL - Revolutionary Road, Blue Valentine and Last Night. 

These wonderful three films deal with tragic romances. Revolutionary Road - as if I haven't talked about it enough - follows the crumbling relationship of April and Frank Wheeler. Blue Valentine follows a young married couple, Dean and Cindy, who seem to be going through a very bad and dark rough patch. Last Night is harder and deals with Joanna and Michael Reed, a young married couple living in New York. This film deals with the art of infidelity and the feelings for two different people. Hard stuff but three very great films. 

But what stands out to me about these wonderful and devastating films is the art of leaving. In Revolutionary Road - spoiler alert! - April leaves the marriage but having a fatal abortion that kills her, she, however, has also left the marriage via her mind by a) sleeping with another man and b) telling her husband she doesn't love him - whether she's just lying or not is debatable. 

In Blue Valentine it is Cindy who seems to be the most cold - a bitch to some people - but in reality she just understands her marriage is over, that the two of them have out-grown each other, she's being realistic, not staying in a dead-end and unhappy marriage. In Last Night she realizes that she may still love her old boyfriend. She's cheated on her husband - and, the same night he cheated on her too - but she is the first to tell him ergo the first to end the marriage. 

In these films it is the women who are leaving the men, not the other way around. Women that are emotionally leaving their husbands. April through an abortion. Cindy through a discussion. Joanna through talking. It's an interesting thought and an interesting topic to look into - do women always leave their husbands emotionally, rather than physically? The men move out or run off with someone else when the women say "it's over"? Stereo-typically, women are more thoughtful than men. Sex, for example, has to work out in the mind before the physical act is committed - stereo-typically, of course. 


But worth a thought, eh?