UVic “Modern Love” Stories, inspired by the New York Times column
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
If you haven’t yet seen Aquamarine, I’m about to spoil the end, so skip the next paragraph if it’s on your watchlist (and it should be — it’s a classic of the teen-girl early 2010s genre).
At the end of Aquamarine, Aqua (the film’s shapeshifting half-human-half-mermaid heroine) sits on the beach ready to become a mermaid again after a brief stint as a human, defeated that she couldn’t prove that love was real. Her father, the king of the ocean, gave her three days to prove love existed if she wanted to stay on land, and in the end, Aqua couldn’t get her three-day situationship to tell her he loved her. In the scene, she sits crying with her friends Claire and Hailey, there to send Aqua off to the ocean with a confession of platonic love.
And when they confess, suddenly everything is okay again. Through the love and friendship of Claire and Hailey, Aqua has just proven that love is real.
I watched the film at ten for the first time, and didn’t understand then how platonic love could ever measure up to romantic love. Eleven years later, it was another ocean-themed film that officially began my journey of reflection on the boundaries of platonic love. That film was Shark Tale. And no, I was not inspired by the friendship that blossomed between Oscar the fish and Lenny the shark. Rather, it was who I watched the movie with.
When I met Sarah and Tessa, I thought my love quota was full. We became close at the beginning of fourth-year university: the year when not much is supposed to happen, because it’s the last year of school. The wrap up. But for us, it was the start.
Sarah and I had been casual friends all through university, championing the French program together. We became close when she wrote vulgar words in the margins of my notebook, and showed me how to make beaded earrings. She knew a lot about medical history, and reminded me of a bright spring day.
Tessa was Sarah’s roommate since first year, and I became friends with her after realizing that we wrote the same type of fanfiction in high school. She kept a really clean room and never outgrew her Greek mythology phase. Her presence made me feel like I was being wrapped in a warm blanket.
The next time we met was at Sarah and Tessa’s new place, the Argyle Street Basement Suite, which became a haven of microwave popcorn and letting inside thoughts seep outside.
We ate green grapes when we could afford them, and none of us thought twice about singing along to every song in Pitch Perfect. They say love feels like coming home, and I found it with them, right in the beginning, when we all laughed at Boomer telling the Bellas they are “awesome-ly horrible.” I’d like to think it struck us all at the same time, when we realized this was it. Every great love story starts with an excuse to keep seeing each other; and so began the “Feminist Film Club”.
Every week we met in the basement suite to watch a film and analyze its feminist themes. Did it pass the Bechdel test? Were the female characters merely side-pieces to the men in the story? Etcetera.
Our first official pick was the cinematic masterpiece and future classic, Cocaine Bear (2023, dir. Elizabeth Banks). We considered it a feminist film because the starring bear is female. During the scene where the coked-out bear sits on the park ranger’s face, we all heard each other’s real laughs for the first time — the kind of laugh that’s painful and gives you a beautiful double chin. My worries about whether they really liked me started to fade. I could see the worry fading behind their eyes, too, and we made a silent pact to let loose around each other.
For the Feminist Film Club’s first field school outing, we booked tickets to watch Bottoms. We were inspired by the trailer and a desire to recreate a viral TikTok video of three girls standing beside the Bottoms poster, saying the iconic lines: “Will the ugly untalented gays please come to the office?” “…Guess that’s you guys.”
I’ve never been able to squash my fear that I was secretly ugly and untalented — I didn’t worry about being gay, I was very confident in my bisexuality — but suddenly, none of it mattered anymore. When we were together, our appearances and abilities weren’t important. We’d take each other in any form. The only talent we needed was enough free time to see each other. Somehow, the rest came naturally, making each other laugh as easy as breathing.
The next film we saw in theatres was Priscilla. During the car ride back, I zoned out to the memory of the final scene, when “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton plays as Priscilla finally leaves Elvis. I had been there before. I wondered if that was a popular song for women who were leaving abusive relationships. I broke the car’s silence, and told my friends I had listened to that song in the same situation. They told me that they wished they knew me back then. There is a special grief in meeting people, clicking with them instantly on a deep level, and wishing with all your heart you had met them earlier, when you needed them. The fact that I knew these people at all, though, was enough.
Our mutual ability to comfort each other was really put to the test after we watched The Virgin Suicides. At first, we clung to the humour in it, and admitted that we related to the sentiment of Lux Lisbon writing her crush’s name on her underwear. Then, there wasn’t much to find funny anymore, and we sat in the basement in a cold sweat at the final scene of a post-apocalyptic gas-mask-themed party.
Three girls who usually always had something to say were quiet. We didn’t know how to make each other feel better, beyond exchanging looks. Eventually, that became enough, and we started fostering the kind of love that comforts you when you see it walking through the door. Watching “Glee moments out of context” on YouTube helped with the post Virgin Suicides scaries.
Finally, after singing (or rather, screaming) Olivia Rodirigo’s “Vampire” in the car on the way to the new Hunger Games film, we let ourselves be what scared us the most: annoying. We created a group chat called “snow roaches” — not because we were mostly white, but because we left the movie theatre with an uncrushable obsession with young President Snow that we didn’t care enough to hide. Suddenly we were crazy and thirteen again, a part of ourselves we all put to sleep in the hopes of making more friends at university. We didn’t know each other at thirteen, but we let ourselves revert back to insane teen girls together. It was freeing. It’s a beautiful thing when the more you reveal, the closer you become.
A few films later (and yes, we insisted on calling them films instead of movies), we were bored together for the first time. Being around them had never been boring, until the Feminist Film Club needed some prestige, and we watched The Godfather. We endured 175 minutes of misogyny and Italian accents to the best score ever produced. Feminist analysis-wise, though, there were barely any women, unless they were getting assaulted or married off. We all agreed we hated watching men talk for nearly three hours straight, and that Diane Keaton should have had more eyebrows. We watched the terrible things that happened on screen, and laughed about the terrible things that had happened to us. Sure, we had our share of Godfather-esque run-ins with bad men in the past, but there, in the overpriced and poorly decorated basement suite, we could laugh; because now we had each other.
The first time we hurt each other was at the movie theatre in November two years ago. We sat in a row in front of the screen about to watch Saltburn, which we heard was strange, weird, freaky, and disturbing. These were all accurate descriptors of us too, but we didn’t reveal that to each other until after watching that film. In the darkness of the theatre, we squeezed each other’s hands as hard as we could, watching the scenes that excited us without the fear of a judgmental face. Saltburn pushed the boundaries of what might make others leave. But none of us ever did. Even after literally biting on each other’s hands in an outburst of emotion, we’re all still here. People that really love you won’t leave. Especially not for liking weird parts of a film. Except for the grave scene. We’re not that weird.
No great love story is without tears, and coming out of the theatre beside the All of Us Strangers poster at Cineplex Odeon, we stood in a circle and did just that. We just looked at each other with tears streaking our cheeks, nothing to do but squeeze our bags of leftover popcorn. We now knew what we each looked like sad — genuinely sad. Not just the kind of sad that prompts a joke so you can laugh it away. In a friendship that had been defined by laughter, we let ourselves cry. One of us (not naming names) sobbed so hard she got nauseous, and we loved her anyway.
I hate to reference Bruno Mars, but after meeting my best friends I feel like I had been locked out of heaven. For too lo-oo-o-oo-ong. In medieval oaths of loyalty we swore we’d kill and die for each other, and spoke aloud our dreams of owning a sheep farm in Scotland, where my boyfriend would be allowed to live in our cellar. I hope you find love from your friends like I have. I hope they tell you that they would kill and die for you, and run away to own a sheep farm, or a lighthouse, or start a cult with you. I hope they love you annoying, scared, ugly-laughing, and when you’re crying until you’re throwing up. Love has always been an option. We just have to look — and find it.
