(MY) LOVE STORIES

I am not sure whether I can be considered a romantic at heart but I am definitely a sucker for love stories. I can watch the same romance movies over and over again and never get bored. This fascination with romance movies must have stemmed from my own inability to have my own version of romantic experiences worthy of a story (so sedihkan?). The first romance movie ever I watched on the big screen was 'Hapuslah Airmatamu' which was produced in 1976. It was shown in an old local cinema in my hometown long after it was screened nationally (that tells you how small the town where I was staying was and how behind the time too). I was still in primary school back then and the local cinema usually issued free tickets to students (as a way of promoting the cinema I believe). There is always a catch when it comes to free stuff. We had to fight our way to the ticket counter in order to redeem our tickets and of course, you could only get tickets for the third class seats. The cinemas back then were definitely different than the ones we have today. The seats were hard, there was no air-conditioning and sitting at the front seats could cause you to have muscle-strain on your neck for a week! But it was still fun. After all, there was not much entertainment that we could indulge in back then. During my secondary school years, this hobby of mine continued. Weekends were spent at the cinemas and I have to admit that some of the movies are terrible. The dialogues are so fake and made-up, the acting definitely unnatural and the cinematography really amateurish (do I pass as a movie critic here?). Sometimes, I am ashamed to admit that I have watched them but there are times when I brag to my friends that I have watched movies nobody wanted to watch. Still, love stories are love stories and I would watch whatever that was shown and available. Now, I think (note the phrase 'I think') I have better taste but I'll watch anything that has the word 'amour' written all over it. Of course, some of these movies are quite explicit in nature and are not suitable for children below a certain age but love is still love. It can manifest itself in so many different ways and forms. It is indeed wonderful to love and to be loved but not all love stories end with the clichéd 'and they lived happily ever after'. Sometimes, fate determines that two people who are very much in love are just not meant to be together. Sad but true. Love is wonderful and it can be cruel. It can heal and at the same time, it can hurt. In high school, I watched 'Love Story' starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw and began to understand how fate can be cruel to those who are in love. Since then, I have tried to avoid romance movies which do not have happy endings. My efforts to avoid sad and tragic love stories were not always successful (I cried like a baby watching 'Titanic' and 'Bangkok Love Story') so I often came up with my own script to replace the actual ending. Consequently, this caused my brain to store only images that I wanted to remember. It has also caused many arguments between me and my friends who are always willing to bet that I have the ending all wrong. Well, they can win all the money that they want but at least, I can decide on the ending that I want...

Here are the trailers of three of my all-time favourite romance movies.