'This is Not a Love Story. This is a Story About Love.'

500 Days of Summer

Directed: Marc Webb

Staring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

Fox Searchlight, PG-13, 95 minutes

While walking through an Ikea, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the not-so-starcrossed lovers of (500) Days of Summer, hold hands for the first time as they pass a sign that the furniture giant has slammed on the wall for all of its customers to read and remember: “We don’t make fancy quality, we make true quality”.

Truer words, my Swedish cohorts. And ones that speaks for more than just easily assembled furniture. Because if there is anything that first-time director Marc Webb manages to do with his amalgamously assembled film about the quest for love to be as we want it, not as it is, it’s ditch the need for anything fancy and just make it about quality.

That’s not to say that (500) Days of Summer isn’t sharp. Far from it: it’s nonlinear concept, tracking the highs and lows in the relationship of a non-believer and a hopeless romantic, manages to transcend the one-note shtick that current romantic comedies need in order to stay original and, as a result, relevant. It works because it elevates the movie, not defining it, an easy feet since it has its two leads, abundant in likeability and oozing in adorable, indie charm, to keep the film tied down.

Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are just compatible enough as Tom and Summer, meaning that they don’t work just as a easily as they do. For every micro-similarity (He likes the Smiths! She likes the Smiths!), there is a macro-disparity (He, an ardent believer in love. She, unsure of what the word even means). If the econo-babble is too much to bare, fret not; this is recession friendly cinema, where a secretary and staff writer at a greeting card company can afford an adorable apartment and a dream-sized loft, respectively, all in the curiously un-metropolluted dream world of Los Angeles.

But even those moments feel remarkably acceptable as the film bounces from day 1 of Tom and Summer’s relationship to day 486, randomly shuffling every other day in between. The arbitrary timeline manages to only enhance the film’s constant mantra of not being a love story, but merely a story about love. And that it is: love of music (only here can Morrissey and Hall & Oates be given equal treatment), love of film (everything from grandiose music numbers to neo-realist Fellini), love of anything and everything too complex to understand. Tom uses love as a way to give meaning and avoid confrontation with the reality of his situation. Summer rejects the notion of love for this very reason. He watches The Graduate and sees the lengths that love is worth going to and the necessity in capturing it. She weeps through its hauntingly, ambiguous final scene, witnessing the characters' inner-realization of a romance founded on nothing more than romance, leaving her to wonder if she's simply watching herself. And thus, their relationship defined: witnessing the same common interests through remarkably different perspectives

Perspective, in fact, colors the entire film, reminding us that by knowing how it all ends, we can focus on what happened before. A split screen simultaneously shows us Tom’s expectations paired against his reality, eventually fading into the latter, enveloping him into the sum of his assumptions. An elevator ride, jolly on day 32, cuts abruptly to one that stinks of depression on day 293. It’s a shame, then, that the film didn’t feel the need to bewilder viewers a bit more with its shuffled narrative, instead allowing the film to play out more like a series of vignette’s as opposed to a Kauffman-esuqe meditation on the human condition and the disorientation that comes with emotional attachment.

But this isn’t that kind of movie, nor does it try to be. It could have been one that was better, had it made purposeful and more interesting use of its unique narrative style. But it could have easily been one that was worse, had it dosed every available moment of dialogue with whiplash lingo that writers, too young to call themselves old, are convinced is the vernacular of a generation too old to call themselves young. The film manages to shake any overly pretentious underground charm by being comfortable in its own skin, letting its characters breathe and speak as if they’re truly feeling the ins-and-outs of each other’s company.

Yet, there is a suspicious disconnect in Summer’s character, one who never feels alive enough to be treated as a secondary protagonist. Deschanel plays her wonderfully, but Summer still feels one dimension short of a real-life person. But, conversely, the more we get to know Tom, the more excusable that lack of development becomes. That distance that we feel from Summer begins to shape into something that resembles an honest understanding of who she is or, more accurately, who Tom believes her to be. She becomes the sum of his interests, his passion, his obsession, and his desire – not for her, but for love in the most general term. And that vapidity makes Summer less real, but more human, making tangible her indirect promise to love him for now, not forever.

“I’ve loved this place ever since you brought me,” Summer says to Tom as they unintentionally reunite at a park bench rife with memories, accurate or not. Tom can’t say the same thing about the places that Summer has taken him, both real and emotional. Tom has introduced Summer to a location with foundation, a promise to stay as she remembers it. Summer took Tom to the emotional highs of his desires, but never reciprocated that same solidarity: A date with Summer to Ikea on day 31 is as playful as a similar date on day 238 is suffocating. But it’s always honest, and (500) Days of Summer avoids any of that tactless indie charm by instead showing us everything in between the traditional meet-cute, montage, mixup and mending that comprises most current day celluloid romances. Rest assured, all of that is indeed here, but like the products in its Ikea setting, it’s simply assembled differently, making something purely original in the process.