Five improbable seductions

There are other ways to accomplish a seduction besides kissing the girl to a thousand cloying violins and the classic "eyes meet across a crowded room". Below, my five favorites: every now and then in the history of cinema, two lovely freaks meet against all odds to live out their unorthodox love story.

Nr. 5 Wall-e meets EVE

Changed the way I look at machines. If my laptop falls in love with my microwave oven, I'd probably give them my blessing and listen to them peep to each other with sentimental tears in my eyes.

Nr. 4 Harold and Maude

Talk about age difference. Goes to show that the single most important thing for a couple are common interests, in this case a shared fascination of death. I admit it would have been less of a good movie if it were bowling.


Nr. 3 Rocky and Adrian

Yeah, yeah, you're all going to say you saw that one coming. Well I didn't. How many boxers did you ever see with a girl like Adrian? And when he talks and talks and she doesn't say a word? Or when he takes her to his flat, that dump with the goldfish, and she doesn't run? The detail with the torn undershirt? (Rocky was a man badly in need of a woman, he was.) And when he tells her, I bet you'd be beautiful with your glasses off, and she really is? That is my favourite moment. No complicated make-over, no fancy clothes, no new hair. He just tells her, I think you are very beautiful and wham, from one second to the next, she is. If only more men could do that trick.



Nr. 2 La mala educacion: Enrique and Ignacio

Trés gay and improbably tender. The eyes of a tranny (Zahara, formerly known as Ignacio) and an unapologetically gay hunk of man meat (Enrique) meet across a not particularly crowded club. The tranny turns out to be Enrique's childhood sweetheart. The scene is tainted with such longing it is hard to bear.



Nr. 1 Black Cat White Cat: Zare and Ida

This scene from Kusturica's gipsy comedy is bliss pure and simple. Getting away from everyone in an endless sunflower field, under a blue blue sky. It is improbable enough that a perfect moment like that can occur. Or last.

Aw, just by the way: the sunflower scene starts at 5:27. Until then, nasty scenes of forced and arranged marriages. But it only proves the point, no? Every beautiful seduction - love - is, after all, improbable.