Coincidences of Love, the review of the film with Meg Ryan and David Duchovny

We will not define Coincidences of love (with the original title much more emblematic, and if we want nostalgic, that is What Happens Later) a totally successful film, but on the other hand we understand the motivations that pushed Meg Ryan to want to direct it. It must be said that it is not his original idea, although he wrote it together with Steve Dietz and Kirk Lynn. In fact, the film comes from the play Shooting Star signed by Dietz himself. We will return to how theatrical the work is later, but it is important to open the review by capturing the spirit with which Meg Ryan directed the film: the actress The nineties (par excellence), and actress (par excellence) of the great rom-coms that have contributed to altering our sentimental education, she in fact wanted to give a sort of post-modern response to those films that have marked the popular imagination.

A little too clumsy and a little too careless, Coincidences of love makes sense when it is read from the right perspective: she returned to the cinema almost ten years after her directorial debut with Ithaca – The wait for a return (forgettable, but there was John Mellencamp on the music), Meg Ryan directs what could even de-mythologize her own romantic comedies, as well as rework (!) her disheveled characters under a disillusioned and painful blanket.

Coincidences of love, the plot: meeting again on a day that doesn’t exist

Why then Coincidences of love it’s a film about time. Time gained, time lost. Time recovered, somehow, and then consumed between the gates of a airport blocked due to a snowstorm (the airport is among the typical locations of romantic comedies). Nobody leaves, nobody lands. Furthermore, the story takes place on February 29th. Elusive day, which exists every four years. Then, by chance and by fate, in an unspecified American airport, while flights are blocked “until further notice”, Bill and Willa meet again (David Duchovny and Meg Ryan). Twenty years earlier they had a relationship, which ended in a decidedly stormy way. Both have taken different paths, however the memory of their love has remained vivid and focal: when they meet again, they will take stock of their lives.

The bitter evolution of rom-coms

Contrary to the romantic comedies that marked the 90s, Coincidences of Love extends its gaze towards two characters who, ideally, can instead be their ideal continuation. In this sense the original title explains the concept best: what happens next. What happens when love stops burning? What happens when the dream ends? What happens when the years pass and those old comedies become the reverberation of a very distant happiness? Therefore, the original play fits perfectly with the intentions of Meg Ryan as director and Meg Ryan as actress (relying on a good David Duchovny as the male counterpart, for a role that suits him), intent on making a story in which we can easily reflect ourselves. A sort of “showdown”, between smiles and tears, between melancholy and regretsbecause then the choices made will have a retrospective impact of which we will feel both the weight and the lightness.

Then, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, Coincidences of love suffers terribly from its dazed climax, however stuck in a confined place which, in fact, recalls a theatrical staging: 104 minutes are excessive, and the story takes just that little too long to get into the right mood (stabilising on a downward game , but quite functional to the bitter game put into circulation by the director). Some stylistic choices, then, make everything fin too naivefitting into a language that is sometimes childish (the snowflakes at the opening, which should represent Bill and Willa, cry out for revenge) and sometimes exaggeratedly naive. Nonetheless, there is an underlying tenderness, which sustains the spirit of the film, taking us back to when comedies were just comedies, and the future had not yet been written.