I've been thinking a lot about some lessons supposedly learned (by certain characters) in two movies I've seen recently. "All the Real Girls" and "Lost in Translation" are the two best movies I've seen all year, supplanted only by "The Return of the King." In both of these movies, characters become attracted to another person, whom is considered Untouchable by either being a)married, b)the sister of a best friend, or c) "too young," the latter of which applies to both movies. In both movies, as attraction becomes more and more pronounced, the relationships are given the old one-two as one of the characters does something to drastically alter the connection. (I'm trying to keep it vague, so as not to spoil anything, but who the hell is reading this, anyway?)

Basically Bob sleeps with a nightclub singer, and Noel "fucks" a guy at a lake-house party. In Bob's case, he's not cheating on Scarlett Johannson's character, since they're not a couple. (In fact, he's a married man, so he's technically cheating on his wife back home in America.) In "Girls" Noel cheats on Paul in the midst of a blossoming relationship. In the end, both movies end neither happy nor sad, but the mid-course fuck both have the similar intent, I think: just when a relationship is going great, someone does something to drive a wedge in it and fuck everything up.

Why do people do this? I'm not asking this in a whiny, "Mean People Suck" voice, but in a more direct way: why do people choose to do this time and time again? I think the center of it is found in the "forbidden" quality of both relationships. Paul has alienated his friend Tip by dating his sister. Bob is attracted to Charlotte, but since they are both married, and she is significantly younger than him, it is an impossible relationship. Bob's "infidelity" is clearer to me than Noel's. In an interview with Premiere magazine, Bill Murray describes Bob's one-night stand as a subliminal way of creating distance between him and Charlotte, in order to allow her to see him as a real person, and not some idealized man-figure that will haunt her dreams forever. He fucks the singer in order to let Charlotte go, and to let her have her life free of doubt and "what-ifs."

Noel's is more confusing. In the middle of the first "real" relationship she's had, she ends up sleeping with a guy she meets at a party. The situation is compounded by the fact that she's a virgin. She has had more than one chance to lose it to Paul, but he holds back, waiting for the right time. Paul has been a big womanizer in his small town, and by refusing to have sex with her, he seems to be saying "I've reformed, I'm waiting for the right time." To Paul, this is as real as it gets.

So why does Noel do it? Perhaps youth; she's only 18, recently back from boarding school. Or, in response to Paul's womanizing past, she subliminally wants to even the scales a bit, as if to say, "there, I can do it to." Or maybe she just gets drunk and wants to get fucked, giving in to her youthful demands of partying hard and screwing around.

In each case, however, the acts take the relationship into a new direction, and halt what it "could have been." The movies both end with characters reconciled, but not together. If they ever do get back together, that is left for us to decide.