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The AfterEllen.com Huddle: Scenes of Romance

Even if you don’t have a Valentine today, surely you can appreciate a good romance. In fact, sometimes it’s even sweeter when it’s not your own! In life, these moments happen so quickly and, often, just once. In our favorite romantic scenes on film or TV, we can experience them over and over again. (Note: Grace Chu wants you all to know she’s boycotting this Huddle, because she has no soul.)

OK, lovers: What are your favorite romantic scenes?

Heather Hogan: Oh, I can’t choose just one. My top best number one picks are: Pride and Prejudice‘s golden hour love confession. (Don’t talk shit about Jane Austen to me, I mean it.) Wall-E and EVE’S deep space dance scene. ScarJo and Bill Murray‘s whispered goodbye in Lost in Translation. Juno’s Tic Tac’s in the mailbox thing. That goddamn bloody shirt in Brokeback Mountain. The entire opening sequence of Up. Nino and Amelie’s whole entire deal (in Amelie). Julie Delpy‘s dance in Before Sunset. That scene in The Cutting Edge when Kate tries to be unimpressed with Doug’s 60-dollar tux. The perfect day Bill Murray finally makes in Groundhog Day. Lady and the Tramp sharing a plate of spaghetti. Little Sam running to get the shit kicked out of him by love in Love Actually.

For TV, I reckon it’s this week’s Paige and Emily noir love on Pretty Little Liars. Pam and Jim’s first kiss in “Casino Night” on The Office. When Chuck finally confessed his feelings to Sarah in “Chuck vs. The Three Words.” Willow and Tara’s “Can you just be kissing me now?” Oh! Helen and Nikki’s final scene in Bad Girls: “Shaun is gorgeous, and he’s everything you’d want in a man. But I want a woman.” When Clark proposed to Lois on Lois and Clark and she called him out on being Superman. And on Friday Night Lights when Coach finally comes to his senses and chases Tami T down in the mall to ask her to take him with her to her new awesome college job in the season finale.

The most romantic thing that I’ve ever experienced in real life is one time I got food poisoning on what was meant to be the most love-addled vacation I’d ever hoped for, and I yarfed for like three hours and when I came out of the bathroom looking like someone who had yarfed for three hours, my girlfriend-who’d been running downstairs buying Gatorade after Gatorade for me-looked over and her face got so soft and her eyes crinkled up so sweetly and she said, “You’re beautiful, you know that?” And then she big spooned me until my fever broke. Also, she held my hand one time while I cried for like three hours after meeting J.K. Rowling. OK, and also she chased down an ice cream truck for me once, like two full blocks of sprinting after that ringing bell, while shouting at me the whole time over her shoulder to stop running because my shoes were untied and I was going to break my face. She caught him.

OK, anyway. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.

Bridget McManus: My pick is the scene in which Jodie Foster pushed through the crowd of onlookers and screamed out Richard Gere‘s name before he was hanged in the period piece Sommersby. Gere’s character wants to see the face of his love before he dies but Foster refuses to watch. In the end, Foster shows up frantic shouting, “Don’t, please!” and when she screams “Jack! I’m here!” I always burst into tears. She loved him so much that she honored his wishes and watched him leave this world. Damn, that movie is depressing and romantic.

Elaine Atwell: My favorite romantic scenes are those that acknowledge that our regular, everyday language just isn’t enough to express what we feel when we’re in love (or, as Louis in Angels in America put it, if you must talk, talk dirty.” I love in Amelie where the two main characters finally meet and don’t say a word, just kiss in perfect silence. And I love in Moulin Rouge when Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman sing the corniest love song ever at each other WHILE SHE IS DYING and hearts explode and the laws of gravity are suspended. But maybe most of all I love that scene in The Jerk when Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin sing Tonight You Belong To Me on the beach. Like maybe all you need in the perfect moment in your life is your person, a ukulele, a cornet, and your Special Purpose.

Ali Davis: Oh, man. Dorks have so many. Like so much Jane Austen and if you try to tell me that plowing through the first third of A.S. Byatt‘s Possession isn’t made so, so worth it by the other two I WILL CUT YOU and the odds are still very good to this day that you can make my knees buckle by saying, “As you wish.”

But my favorites might be the weird ones. I love, love, love Tim and Dawn coming together and finally kissing in the British version of The Office, but what really got me in that episode might be the moment where David, on a first date with a woman who is kind of ordinary but also kind of wonderful and just open enough to be able to see what could be good in him, finally tells the office jerk to fuck off. Because some of the best parts of love are those moments when you find the best part of yourself.

And for some reason one of the movie scenes that really hit me at the time and has stayed with me is from Ed Wood, where Ed explains to Kathy that, yes, he likes to sleep with women, but he prefers to dress in women’s clothing. And she thinks about it for a moment and then just says “OK.” Her face is so full of perfect acceptance-I just love it.

In real life, it’s probably after we spent three days together all the time, each trying to figure out what the other one wanted, and then we spent the afternoon casually mentioning that we didn’t usually drink that much, but we might have a couple tonight, no real reason, and then we were back on her couch with our feet tangled up, flushed and smiling at each other but still technically safe and just being friendly and then finally she sat up, grabbed me by the shirt, and kissed me.

Pro tip: I cannot recommend that move highly enough.

Dara Nai: At the end of Rocky, Rocky achieved his goal to go the distance, and prove to himself and the world that he wasn’t just a broken-down bum, but all he wanted was Adrian. Exhausted, bloodied, and barely able to see, Rocky is swarmed by trainers and reporters in the ring, but he just kept crying out, “Adrian! Adrian!” over and over. She finally pushes her way into the ring, where they embrace and say, “I love you!” “I love you. I love you.” Oh, and it’s New Years Day. I don’t know what’s become of Sylvester Stallone but there was this one time when he was an amazing writer.

In real life, there are many “mosts,” great and small, but one of my favorites is a small one: Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I realize my wife and I are holding hands in our sleep.

Valerie Anne: When Tara told Willow, “I am, you know. Yours.” When Maya made Emily an underwater-scape because she couldn’t be on the swim team. Every speech either Castle or Beckett has given when one of them was in a life-threatening situation (so basically, every other episode of Castle). The whole end of Pitch Perfect. When Cosima offered to get Eskimo pies for Delphine. In South of Nowhere, that time Spencer was looking in the refrigerator and Ashley walked up and kissed her on the shoulder. On Doctor Who, when Rory waited two millennia for the girl who waited. The scene where Arizona strolled up to Callie in the bathroom at the bar, introduced herself, gave her some encouraging words, then kissed her square on the mouth. When Casper asks Kat if he can keep her.

I could literally go on forever. I love moments that aren’t flashy and grand for everyone to see, the ones that aren’t generic and could have been applied to anyone. I love the personal moments, the little things. (Or, sometimes, the bigger, but totally selfless things. Lauren Lewis is famous for those.) I cannot, however, stand overly cheesy sap-fests. My mom eats Lifetime movies up like candy and I nearly pull muscles from all the eye rolling and dramatic gagging noises necessary to survive them.

Lucy Hallowell: Jim’s wedding speech on The Office is the best wedding toast ever given. Heather already mentioned it but the freaking shirts in Brokeback Mountain reduced me to a sobbing mess for long enough to embarrass me, my wife, and all the other theater goers in the bathroom of the movie theater. When Luce tells Rachel, “Don’t forget me,” and Rachel says “I won’t remember anything else” in Imagine Me & You. But if I could really only pick one (and not cheat with a thousand other picks crammed in), I have to go with Idgie and Ruth. From “You’re a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode” to “I’m as settled as I ever hope to be” and ending with the ugly-cry inducing scene where Ruth is dying and Idgie can’t figure out how say everything she always wanted to say so Ruth says “go on you ol’ Bee Charmer, tell me a good tall tale.”

Chloe: Books: Lemony Snicket‘s The Beatrice Letters. Movies: Breakfast At Tiffany’s when he rescues the wet cat, named Cat, and they kiss. Also Titanic when they’re re-united in the ballroom and dance in front of everyone clapping. The Notebook when they die holding hands. NO APOLOGIES.

Kimberly Hoffmann: The last episode ever of My So-Called Life is full of this dreamy anticipation that Angela will finally get her big chance with Jordan Catalano, but Brian Krakow’s not-so-secret but totally confused crush on her seems to show all his heartbreak. She’s standing on her street under the foggy streetlamp as Brian glides along on his bike, watching her get in Jordan’s car. And then we never know what might have become of any of them. Also, I guess I’ll keep the Claire Danes theme rolling along because mostly all of Romeo + Juliet gets my heart a-thumping. That meet encounter at the costume party! Honorary mentions: Winona at the end of Edward Scissorhands saying about the snow/how she knows Edward is alive: “Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it” And of course, from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “Meet me in Montauk.”

In my life: My girlfriend leaves me beautiful love notes all the time. She’s made me cards on holidays and birthdays with cut-outs of lovers like our kitties Squirt and Luna or Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson and turns her words into poetry. But nothing will too when we first met. I travelled across the country and walked into her apartment building and she ran across the hall and scooped me up and we were so nervous we shook for hours, drank two shot of whiskey, and couldn’t stop smiling and giggling.

Dana Piccoli: “As you wiiiiiiiiiiiish.” The Princess Bride pretty much set an impossible bar to reach in terms of romance in my heart.

The whole sign thing in Love Actually-which OK, was kind of a dick move considering she was already married-but man, did it make my heart pound.

I think this is kind of an underrated moment, but the kiss right after Paige and Emily sing karaoke together at the dive bar. After that first disastrous kiss in the car, this one is so sweet and satisfying. After this highly charged and giddy experience, it slows down and becomes this beautifully romantic kiss, this time initiated by Emily. It fills me with butterflies, and reminds me of my own first kisses.

Jill Guccini: OK, I love romance so much and you guys have all given so many great moments that my mind is on overdrive. But, in recent memory, the most romantic book I’ve read is Eleanor and Park. Eleanor is a poor, chubby, red headed girl, and Park is a half-Korean kid who loves comics and music, and while some very dramatic things happen over the course of the book, I can’t stop thinking about the beginning of their love affair, when they sit quietly next to each other on the school bus and read comics, and then Park starts bringing his Walkman (it’s the ’80s) so they can listen to punk rock while they read. And then one day he wants to give the Walkman to Eleanor overnight to listen to a tape he made, and she’s like NO, NO, because she is so poor and doesn’t want to take this expensive Walkman and he’s like it’s fine, I don’t care, and she’s like NO, I’ll use up the batteries, your batteries, and I can’t replace them, and she’s so upset, but they’re hardly talking at this point still, just always sitting silently together reading comics, so he doesn’t understand. But then one day he buys her a shit ton of double A batteries and she takes the Walkman and maybe you have to know Eleanor Douglas and Park Sheridan better but for at least a week, every time I walked by a display of batteries at the store I wanted to weep.

I also really, really like Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Oh, and OBVIOUSLY, the best storyline in Love Actually is the one with Aurelia, and when they both separately learn each other’s languages, GUH, and when all of a sudden he’s just like “I HAVE TO GO” and runs to the airport and the whole village follows them and then when Aurelia says “Just in cases” AHH AHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Trish Bendix: One of my favorite movies is this British indie from from 2001 called Me Without You. In the film Michelle Williams plays Holly, who is desperately in love with Nat, her best friend Marina’s (Anna Friel) brother. Marina is selfish and possessive and spends most of her life trying to keep Holly to herself, ruining any chance Nat and Holly have at love at several times throughout their lives. Eventually they are all unhappily married and back together at a home in the English countryside for a New Year’s party, and they play a game where you must describe someone in the room and the others must guess through a series of questions.

Guest: What element are they like? Nat: Seawater. The dark sea. Guest: What poet? Nat: Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Guest: What time of day? Nat: Dusk. Guest: Which painter? Nat: Whistler. Holly: It’s lsabel. (Nat’s wife) Isabel: No, it’s not. It’s Holly. The truest game?

The next game: Sardines in the dark, where Nat and Holly end up in the same closet together. Nat says, “I talk to you in my head all the time.” Holly closes her eyes and says, “It’s horrible out there.” “Why can’t we stay in here forever?” “What’s stopping us?” “You tell me.” It’s so romantic and hot and sad at the same time!

Eboni Rafus: The examples you have all shared are so beautiful and romantic in various ways, and I especially echo the bloody shirt in Brokeback Mountain (I was obsessed with that movie for about three years after it came out because of that damn shirt) and the Ruth and Idgie scene in Fried Green Tomatoes (one of my favorite movies of all time, partially because it’s the movie that made me realize that I was really into girls).

However, I tend to be a sucker for the best-friends-turned-lovers storyline which is why I always rooted for Dawson and Joey on Dawson’s Creek. The evolution of Pacey and Joey’s relationship – starting when he rented her a wall to paint on, continuing to when he kissed her for the first time on the side of the road because she said he knew her better than anyone else and he was tired of talking and when they are dancing at the Anti-Prom and he tells her “I remember everything.” – is also very romantic, but I’ll always be a DJer, because they were best friends first and foremost.

It, therefore, shouldn’t be a surprise anyone that one of my favorite movies is Some Kind of Wonderful. In the movie that is my life, I’ve always played the Watts character so when Watts and Keith kiss, and she wraps her legs around him and he squeezes her hips and digs his nails into her jeans, I can imagine what it would feel like to discover something new about someone you thought you knew so well. And in the end, when she’s walking away crying and he runs after her because he finally sees what had been right in front of him all along, and he scoops her up and kisses her and gives her the earrings he spent all his college savings on and tells her “You look good wearing my future,” my heart melts.

In my personal life I appreciate the little things–small gestures and inside jokes–more than the dramatic displays of affection or extravagant gifts. It’s the idea that I can be completely known and truly understood by another person that seduces me. To me, romance is when Jeff Bridges orders dinner for Barbara Streisand in The Mirror Has Two Faces and he knows to get her a little extra dressing on the side. I love the scene in The Color Purple when Shug sings “Miss Celie’s Blues” at Harpo’s juke joint to let Celie know that she sees her, she understands her, that, in fact, they are two of a kind.

Love at first sight doesn’t appeal to me. It’s love after seeing someone–really seeing them–or a long time and knowing the good, the bad and the ugly and accepting them for who they truly are that makes me swoon. For me, one of the most romantic movies of all time is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because to know someone so well, including all their faults and shortcoming and the particular way that they are going to break your heart and yet caring about them enough to want to try again because the good memories outweigh the bad… well, maybe that’s not romantic, but it is true love.

Marcie Bianco: Audre Lorde. People, just Audre Lorde – and “Recreation,” in particular.

What is your favorite romantic scene of all time?

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