'(500) Days of Summer' (2009) directed by Marc Webb

While watching this film I became increasingly frustrated. I found it quite hard to get into, it was a bit all over the place. It employs a range of storytelling techniques, most of which don't really work. The worst of these is probably the use of voiceover narration which seems totally out of place. There's also a pretty awkward dreamy dance sequence. I don't know, I really wanted to like this film but the tone of it was a bit confused. The characters weren't quite likeable enough for it to be an interesting romance but it wasn't really funny either, despite the light tone. The film's structure is non-linear, it plays with time, constantly shifting back and forth so as to create these kind of snapshot memories of a relationship. It's an interesting technique, but I had to wonder whether it really served the narrative. Instead, I found it kind of fragmented the story, ultimately undermining it. It didn't allow me to get involved with the relationship, to see it develop. The structure seemed to be that in one scene it's quite romantic and happy but in the next you see Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character miserable. This sequence then repeats for a good portion of the film. I found this a little tedious. Having said that, there were some nice moments in the film, I particularly liked the split screen "Expectation vs Reality" scene. I also thought that there was some nice chemistry at times between Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Basically, I left the cinema feeling a bit ambivalent about the whole thing, I'm still not totally sure what I think of it but I still keep coming up with criticisms. I guess that means I'm still thinking about it days later though.