It's complicated: Love And Life After Divorce

Here I go again, writing about a romantic film in March. This time, it’s about It’s Complicated, which was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, the same writer/director who gave us instant romantic comedy classics like Something’s Gotta Give and The Holiday. Starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, It’s Complicated explores love and life after divorce for people in their fifties, when, as they say, life begins again.

It’s Complicated was one of those films that premiered on Christmas last year; thus, it was bumped off by the Metro Manila Film Festival. I’m only saying, because I had to wait over two months to see it—and Meyers has only been making like one film every three years. The thing about a Meyers film is that she knows women, and she knows how to make them feel good about themselves, quirks, imperfections and all. It would have been great to have a Meyers film to ease the low points of being single on Christmas.

In The Holiday (2006), there was Amanda Woods, the gorgeous, successful workaholic whose boyfriend cheats on her, and Iris Simpkins, who’s pretty and intelligent and yet is carrying a torch for a guy who suddenly announces he’s engaged to someone else. These two girls find their own happy endings when they also learn their worth. In Something’s Gotta Give (2003), there’s the playwright Erica Barry, who survives a divorce and lives a comfortably safe life that is suddenly shaken up when she falls for her daughter’s boyfriend, a media mogul and eternal playboy. Again, the happy ending comes when she learns to step out of her comfort zone.

In It’s Complicated, we have Jane Adler (Streep), a pastry chef with a successful bakeshop who is in her late fifties and has moved on from her divorce with ex-husband Jake Adler (Baldwin)—or so she thinks, ten years after the fact. When she and Jake start a passionate affair, she finds herself making one step forward and two steps backward to a very promising future with another divorcee with whom she has excellent rapport, her architect Adam Schaffer (Martin).

 Jake, who is now married to a thirty-something woman, tries to get back together with Jane, and Jane finds herself considering the idea, or at least letting it stew, until it becomes clear to her that that part of her life is completely over.

What’s lovely about this new Meyers film is that Jane, who is played brilliantly, as always, by a luminous Streep, is a woman who is entering another chapter in her life—one that has her single again, free to do what she wants with her own money, successful in a trade she’s clearly passionate about, and finally moving on to the rest of her life. Jane makes the fifties look tantalizing, if only for the self-awareness she has developed and its accompanying energy.

What’s even lovelier about this new Meyers film is that it pairs a pot-bellied Baldwin with Streep. Finally, the Hollywood men are catching up with women their own age!

What’s the loveliest about this new Meyers film, however, is that it leaves viewers with the feeling that, no matter what you’ve been through, there is still something great in store for you—but only if, like Jane, you make room for it in your life by throwing out what is no longer working.

Meyers knows her women, I tell you.

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