Before Sunset: "pain and desire are synonyms of my pleasure "

During the final credits Juile Delpy's song Je T'aime Tant plays and one of the lyrics is "douleur et desir sont synonymes de mon plaisir" which translates to pain and desire are synonyms of my pleasure. this paradox  is a common theme in love and in desire. while love can breed fulling emotions such as pleasure,  it has a price, there must be a degree of suffering. That is often what fuels passion, the angst and constant wanting, but knowing its not a good idea to indulge in ones desires. the two main characters,Celine and Jesse, both held tight the memories of that night. Both are  involved in unfulfilling relationship knowing that the passion in their current relationship will never match the passion of there night together, but there is something that makes them stay.All relationships hold one unique quality that makes them worthwhile, no mater how badly it turned out in the end. Celine says in the movie "You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details."  there is something about the beloved that captivates the lover in the beginning and that is often what keeps them captivated until the end. the collection of those details are hard to forget and will remain beautiful as long as the lover still has the skewed perception of the beloved. this movie proves that passion/desire is not bound by time and it has an everlasting effect like this quote from Madam Bovary states "An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”


 

Steve Almond response

Steve almond brought up a good point about the difference between real sex and pornography, the difference is much like that of love and desire. desire and pornography both breed fantasy changing from person to person, real sex and love work hand and hand and reveal a depth of the self and not all of it is pretty and perfect. there can be no love without desire but there can be desire without love, like there is sex involved in porn but real sex does not include the "gymnastics" as Steve almond had put it during his reading. when in love there is indeed fear, doubt, insecurities, hope and longing these contradicting emotions contribute to the overall feeling of arousal we all long for. without the mixed feelings and internal struggle passionate love turns into compassionate love. once there is less to be insecure about and the doubts diminish what is left is what will determine if the relationship can last. in the process of discovering new love there is the desire for ones partner to accept things about them that that have trouble accepting themselves  maybe if this person can accept them they are one step closer to accepting themselves. in Steve Almonds short story Skull when one of the characters, Zach, was explaining to the other, character Pete, the reasoning behind his odd sexual behavior with his girlfriend he said "You know, anyone can love the other parts of her. You've seen her, Pete. She's a beautiful woman. But to have a man accept that part of her, it drives her crazy. That's what we all want anyway, to have our lover accept the most damaged part of us, right? Am I right?" while love and contribute to the damaged parts of us psychologically, the partnership of  a relationship and not having to deal with things individually but together makes it worth the efforts. in one of my favorites films "Like Crazy' there is a quote that cam to mind " ...the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half. I didn't know, don't know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me."love is  wanting to be part of something even if it can break you down, all in order to feel acceptance and perhaps to see that someone else is just as damaged as you.

Halfaouine

This movie explored the sexual coming of age for a young boy in Tunisia. At the age of twelve Nora is able to move easily between the world of women and that of the men. The women are more at peace with their sexuality then the men, which I thought was unusual but refreshing.  Nora was not allowed to truly explore his sexuality because he had to feign innocents with his mother and he wasn’t allowed to express his desire for women around his father. There were few male role models who expressed their desire for women openly and even fewer who did anything about it. Nora’s desire for women grew more and more each day but he had to hide in the night and undermine his own budding masculinity in order to get a taste of it. In Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion she writes “these very constraints bred waiting and desire,” Nora’s inability to publically act on his desires made his chance for women that much more intriguing particularly because of the added risk of his father’s disapproval. Nora’s desires grew stronger because he felt inhibited.  Conchita, The Bad Girl, Celestina, and many of the other characters we looked at last semester all had an understanding of desire. The less you can have something the more that you want it.   These women used their desirability in order to gain more control of their relationships. Leading the man on but never giving to much because once their curiosity is satisfied they begin to lose interest.  For Nora he was experiencing a desire in a unique form he knew he could never indulge in the “delights” of many of the women he saw in the bathes, but he began to see the beauty in the human form. The desire he began to feel was  an awakening as opposed to  indulging in a habit like it will become for him upon maturity.