I love Valentine’s Day because I love hearts. I was obsessed with them in high school, and at 18, still reeling from a heartbreak, I got a heart tattooed onto the back of my neck. I was a little disheartened a few years later when I noticed that countless other women had the same tattoo (it was like the dolphin on the ankle or the tribal armband of its time). But now I see some grace in it, something true. The heart shape is corny, turning the visceral, impressive mass of a real heart into something simple and cute, easily drawn by a child or preferrably cut out from paper, folded in two for perfect symmetry. But in its curves and sharp point, it still carries the dual powers of a heart, to feel love and to break.
In film, hearts aren’t just metaphors. They appear often in horror, like the famous shot in Suspiria where the cherry red organ is exposed, the better to see it being stabbed. But film also gives us both the symbol and its bloody corollary: like in Mother!, when the wife, who only wants to love, senses a beating heart in the walls of her home, one she ultimately unearths and holds in her hand, an echo of the one organ that doesn’t burn up when she does. Or the unforgettable image of Bart Simpson’s heart being literally ripped out by the girl he likes. “You won’t be needing this anymore!” she cackles before kicking the cartoon heart– pink, blue-veined, endearingly small–into a garbage can.
There is also the sacred heart in the opening of Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet: hotly red, garlanded in roses, licked by flames (Catholic imagery perhaps unparalleled in both beauty and gore), an image of love I saw at 7 and haven’t been able to shake. Or the many hearts in Moulin Rouge, a perpetual favourite and a film so unrestrained, beautiful, fake, corny, and true that you might think it invented the shape. I appreciate a dumb, obvious symbol… the dozen red roses, the slow dance. I mean, even babies know what a heart means: you only need to feel it.
Movies also shape our sense of what love looks like. And even if they’ve been seen by millions, we still feel, in the moment of recognition, that they are speaking about our own specific and messy desires. Like the chaotic vectors of sex and repulsion in Shiva Baby, or the sweet letdowns of young love in Adventureland. Or the way losing love can feel like a death; think of The Vanishing’s painful symbol, an image of a lost one crystalized on a poster: missing.
And there’s the line from the now-infamous Nicole Kidman AMC ad, “Somehow, even heartbreak feels good here”, but I think it’s the opposite: it makes our regular lives feel more cinematic. It’s maybe the one comfort of being inside a heartbreak, suddenly all of those post-breakup activities–listening to pop songs on your headphones, going out and getting inadvisably drunk, crying on the bus, lying in bed for hours–aren’t pathetic, but picturesque, imbued with some specialness, an indulgence that would usually be unacceptable.
So this V-Day, it’s all about putting it on the line, wearing it on your sleeve. Like texting your ex before a heartbreaking rewatch, forcing your partner to sit through a punishing romance, delving into wells of machismo for unruly desires, telling us about a crush from the most vulnerable place, a dream.
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at In the Mood ❤️
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine
I love Valentine’s Day because I love hearts. I was obsessed with them in high school, and at 18, still reeling from a heartbreak, I got a heart tattooed onto the back of my neck. I was a little disheartened a few years later when I noticed that countless other women had the same tattoo (it was like the dolphin on the ankle or the tribal armband of its time). But now I see some grace in it, something true. The heart shape is corny, turning the visceral, impressive mass of a real heart into something simple and cute, easily drawn by a child or preferrably cut out from paper, folded in two for perfect symmetry. But in its curves and sharp point, it still carries the dual powers of a heart, to feel love and to break.
In film, hearts aren’t just metaphors. They appear often in horror, like the famous shot in Suspiria where the cherry red organ is exposed, the better to see it being stabbed. But film also gives us both the symbol and its bloody corollary: like in Mother!, when the wife, who only wants to love, senses a beating heart in the walls of her home, one she ultimately unearths and holds in her hand, an echo of the one organ that doesn’t burn up when she does. Or the unforgettable image of Bart Simpson’s heart being literally ripped out by the girl he likes. “You won’t be needing this anymore!” she cackles before kicking the cartoon heart– pink, blue-veined, endearingly small–into a garbage can.
There is also the sacred heart in the opening of Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet: hotly red, garlanded in roses, licked by flames (Catholic imagery perhaps unparalleled in both beauty and gore), an image of love I saw at 7 and haven’t been able to shake. Or the many hearts in Moulin Rouge, a perpetual favourite and a film so unrestrained, beautiful, fake, corny, and true that you might think it invented the shape. I appreciate a dumb, obvious symbol… the dozen red roses, the slow dance. I mean, even babies know what a heart means: you only need to feel it.
Movies also shape our sense of what love looks like. And even if they’ve been seen by millions, we still feel, in the moment of recognition, that they are speaking about our own specific and messy desires. Like the chaotic vectors of sex and repulsion in Shiva Baby, or the sweet letdowns of young love in Adventureland. Or the way losing love can feel like a death; think of The Vanishing’s painful symbol, an image of a lost one crystalized on a poster: missing.
And there’s the line from the now-infamous Nicole Kidman AMC ad, “Somehow, even heartbreak feels good here”, but I think it’s the opposite: it makes our regular lives feel more cinematic. It’s maybe the one comfort of being inside a heartbreak, suddenly all of those post-breakup activities–listening to pop songs on your headphones, going out and getting inadvisably drunk, crying on the bus, lying in bed for hours–aren’t pathetic, but picturesque, imbued with some specialness, an indulgence that would usually be unacceptable.
So this V-Day, it’s all about putting it on the line, wearing it on your sleeve. Like texting your ex before a heartbreaking rewatch, forcing your partner to sit through a punishing romance, delving into wells of machismo for unruly desires, telling us about a crush from the most vulnerable place, a dream.
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at In the Mood ❤️
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine