Roberto!

I can think of few movies besides this one that are so honest and vulnerable about love (it is somewhat curious that Call Me By Your Name is in that canon and also disliked by Nicholson). It is very smart about depicting people being in love. Guy is introduced simply being excited to get out of work to go on a date (and no one who isn't in love gets that excited about the opera), Genevieve can barely even wait for the umbrella store to close. I don't know how it is for everyone else, but I've noticed a giddiness that makes every moment shared a small joy. The way that Guy smiles after being pricked by the pins in Genevieve's dress is one that only happens when you're in the thick of it. (Although, I'm guessing that only people you have intimate relationships with are going to be the ones in danger of being pinpricked. It's a real hedgehog's dilemma). When Guy's draft notice comes in, even that gets turned into an opportunity to declare undying love. Of note, is the eponymous umbrella store and how much it plays into that promise of love and how the movie chooses to follow up on that. How can Genevieve wait for Guy when the store she is so used to waiting for him in is no longer safe? I don't know if that's the intention of the film, but it is my experience that so much of youth is tied to the sense-memories of the places where youth is experienced. Guy doesn't have the same relationship with the store as Genevieve, so the loss that he feels the most is his aunt's death. They both serve to wake up the characters to the idea that they can't be the people they used to see themselves as (which in large part was people eternally in love with each other). I think I'm talking around the idea that I want to get at, which is that a place, a moment, and a situation are all essential to our deepest loves and convictions, but that shouldn't cheapen any of it. It just means that if it should ever leave us, what we miss is more textured and overall, maybe just more.