The four loves and pasta, of course
On Metrograph's Valentine's Day special and 4 pastas tied to the 4 types of love.
If you’re in nyc today, or this month, Metrograph has paired a quartet of films for with each of the four types of love—affection, friendship, romance, charity—contemplated in C.S. Lewis’s radio-talks-turned-book, first published in 1960. It’s a refreshing and intriguing (then again Dime Square, may not…?) foundation on which to program a Valentine’s Day series. Regardless of your religious inclinations, you may (correctly!) find the writer/scholar/theologian’s philosophical inquiry stimulating, poetically charged—even a little cheeky.
It energized me to whip up this last minute send, something a little different, and pair each of the different loves with a pasta, the de facto dish of romance, and where to get them. You can find that below.
For traditional rom-com and anti-romcom takes in the moviepudding vein, check out my previous posts from Valentine’s Days past.
SHORT TAKES
Playing at Metrograph today, and later month, and also streaming elsewhere.
A self-reflexive love story where boy meets girl, who met a boy, who once met a girl (and everyone’s lives acutely yet delicately touched because of it), Lou Ye’s SUZHOU RIVER is a glittering piece of modern filmmaking, moody and sly. With its gentle gangsters, doubles, a melancholic undertow and style, it bears the influence of Hong Kong new wave, Vertigo, and then some.
Better than Drive My Car is the other Ryusuke Hamaguchi that came out in 2021— WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY, a shifting meditation on romantic desire that plays like Rohmer and Hong Sang-soo.
I’m surprised by how much my heart yielded to PTA’S LICORICE PIZZA, its smooth rhythms, lived-in texture, and yes the romance. The groovy SoCal mood is encapsulated in the theater restaurant’s themed cocktail—rye, Campari, vanilla, lemon, blood orange—a sunny soda-counter take on the Boulevardier.
CASABLANCA is a film which needs no introduction, which I’m now discovering remains unseen by a number of my friends. After burgers and wine at the newish Revelie, we headed to the Anjelika to correct this, only to realize we went to the wrong one… We did the sensible thing, returning to the chic yet persuasively timeworn luncheonette for more wine, fries, and talk. Sitting under a fringe lamp in the corner booth it felt the tiniest bit like Rick’s. My reassessment and their first evaluation of the classic will just have to wait.
I tried to guess which movie was paired with which love without reading the program notes and came up completely wrong. (I didn’t note them here on purpose, in case you want to take a stab at it). To be fair the boundaries between these love categories do bleed into one another, build on each other, and can ultimately co-exist. The wheels are already spinning in my brain to put together my own “four loves” slate for next year.
4 pastas / 4 loves by C.S. Lewis
Find the book here, the best dried pasta here, and specific dishes linked throughout.
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