Forget Paris (1995)

            ‘Forget Paris’ is a 1995 romantic comedy film directed by Billy Crystal, who himself acted as the main character Mickey Gordon in the film. The film was co-star by actress Debra Winger as Ellen Andrews. The screenplay was written in third person’s point of view, where Mickey’s friends narrated the story of Mickey’s marriage life throughout the film. Mickey is a basketball referee and fall in love with Ellen, an airline employee while he was in Paris for just one week. Mickey starts to develop romantic interest towards Ellen when she helps him found his father’s casket which was lost in the same airlines she works. While Ellen, being separate with her first husband, develop romantic interest towards Mickey as he makes Ellen laugh and forget about her problems. Both of them gets married after discover that each have been fall deeply in love with each other until to the point where it starts to affects their career. After the honeymoon phase of their marriage, things didn’t go as expected and relationships conflicts start to emerge in their marriage life. Whether they did solve all the conflicts from their relationships and whether or not they manage to be together with each other until the end forms the rest of the story.

            Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love (1986) can be applied to study the relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Initially, both of them started their relationship with only having intimacy to each other without considering getting into commitments, the fact that Mickey is only came to Paris to full-fill his father’s last wish and will return back to America very soon. So it was just one week they spend time together and it is not possible to know in details about each other in that short period of time. When Mickey became angry during a game session and gets suspension for a week, it shows that he misses Ellen and develops passion towards her. And Ellen’s decision to resigns her airlines job, officially divorce her first husband and flies over from Paris to America in order to stay together with Mickey illustrate her strong romantic attraction towards Mickey (intimacy with passion). Commitment came into picture when both of them get married. The moment they start companionate love with increasing intimacy, the passion towards each other starts to fall down. This is due to Mickey’s constant away from home for his referee sessions and Ellen have to be alone all the time with doing a job that she dislike. Even Mickey found a way to resolve this by taking off a year from referee job and wanted to spend time with Ellen, things happens unexpectedly where Ellen gets promotion and spend most of the time in workplace while Mickey have to take care of his sick father-in-law all by himself. However, commitment is the key fact that holds both of them together until the end of the film.

Adams’s Equity theory (1969) can be used to explain the conflict that occurs in relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Equity theory explores that couples will be most happy with their relationship if the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners (Hatfield, 2009). In the film,
Ellen left her job in Paris and come over America to stay with Mickey while doing a job that she not interested. But, Mickey doesn’t want to give up his referee professions to anyone including his newly waded wife. He was always away from the house and only spends few days together with Ellen in a month. This created a problem as Ellen have to be alone in house, go shopping alone, go working alone and there is nobody for her to share her feelings. She didn’t quite her job at Paris to come her to be alone. This causes conflict in their marriage life as Ellen perceive Mickey was not equity enough as he didn’t willing to sacrifice as equal as Ellen. Even though Mickey took one year leave of absence from being referee, but he did went back to that job later because he really enjoy doing it and it was his identity. And in another scene, Ellen asked Mickey to together move to Dallas because of her new promotion. But, Mickey do not want move outside from California because he states it was his home and place where he belongs to. This makes Ellen to feels short-changed or under-benefited because she left Paris for him but he doesn’t want to leave California for her. This causes a temporary separation for both of them where Ellen went back to Paris.

             Though out the film I notice that this is not usual film which ends with ‘Happily Ever After’ story but it was realistic enough to point out what are the possibilities, when and how a marriage relationship might get into trouble and how to work out to solve the issue. The film portrays that falling in love was not feeling but it was a decision we took ourselves. Love is action, not emotion. It was Ellen’s action to quit her job in Paris and flies over America to stay with Mickey. Her action is the one causes the life to change for both of them. She might choose to stay in Paris alone in the first place but her action of love made Mickey’s life to be changed as well. This film is an eye-opener for me because it did portrays that keeping high expectation in a relationship will eventually causes more disappointments towards both parties involved if things happens not to our expectations. We always tend to put a lot of expectation for our partner but we forget that other partner also have his/her desires to follow. The title “Forget Paris”, emphasis meaning for both Mickey and Ellen that whatever happy moments happened in Paris, never expect it to happen again because life always change in unexpected way. I really like this movie even though its comedy didn’t make me laugh but it did deliver a massage and awareness about relationship towards the ending. I would give rating 7 out of 10 for this movie.
 

References:
 

Hatfield, E. (2009). Equity Theory. United States of America: Sage Publications, Inc.

 
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological review, 93(2), 119.