Best Love Scenes
1. Like Water For Chocolate (the ending)
Like Water For Chocolate is at once a tall tale, fairy tale, Mexican cookbook, home remedy handbook and romantic, sensual love story all wrapped up together and published as a novel by Laura Esquival in 1989 . It was then made into a movie in 1993. I fell in love with the book first, but the movie is amazing, too. It won 11 Ariel awards at the
Like Water For Chocolate tells the story of Tita, the youngest daughter in a family living in
Pedro marries Tita's oldest sister, Rosaura, instead, per Mama Elena's suggestion, but declares to his father that he has only married Rosaura to remain close to Tita. Rosaura and Pedro live on the family ranch, offering Pedro contact with Tita, whose domaine is the kitchen. It is only through the joy of cooking and food that she is able to fully express her emotion, her sensuality and passion.
Tita's love for Pedro survives the Mexican Revolution, the births of Rosaura and Pedro's children, a stint in an asylum, long distance, even a proposal of marriage from an eligible doctor. In a poignant conclusion, Tita manages to break the bonds of tradition, if not for herself, then for future generations.
So now that I’ve set up the scene, the poignant conclusion, let me tell you what happens and why I love it.
Finally, after many years and the deaths of Mama Elena and Rosaura, Pedro and Tita are free to express their passion and true emotions without hiding or holding back, without fear of hurting anyone or getting caught. They make love and experience ecstasy so blissful, climaxes so intense, that a brilliant tunnel appears. Remembering what John Brown, the eligible doctor, once told her --
“If a strong candle suddenly lights all the candles we carry inside ourselves, it creates a brightness that shines far beyond our normal vision and then a splendid tunnel appears that shows us the way that we forgot when we were born and calls us to recover our lost divine origin. The soul longs to return to the place it came from, leaving the body lifeless”
– Tita checks her passion. She doesn’t want to die. She wants to explore these glorious emotions many more times, to live the remainder of her days with Pedro At the same time, however, she feels Pedro's heartbeat rapidly accelerate and then cease. He has died and entered the tunnel .
Tita desperately wishes she had gone with him. To rekindle the inner fire, Tita consumes the candles that lit the room up until the moment of Pedro's passing—her body needs fuel. As she chews each candle she tries to reproduce the moving memories of her and Pedro—the first time she saw him, the first time they held hands, the first bouquet of roses, the first kiss, the first caress, the first time they made love. The tunnel again opens itself to Tita, and this time she sees the figure of Pedro at its end. Tita leaves the world to go to him. When she meets him, their spirit bodies create sparks that set fire to the ranch.
The fire is so full of beautiful explosions that the townspeople mistake them for fireworks celebrating the wedding of her niece Esperanza and to the doctor’s son, Alex. Upon returning from their honeymoon, Esperanza and Alex find the ranch burned to the ground. They discover, under many layers of ash—ash which made every kind of life flourish on the land from then on-- a cookbook that contains all the recipes mastered by Tita.
The entire novel, the entire movie, but especially the ending in both, celebrates in the most unusual, beautiful, mystical and sensual ways both the true magic and the true mystery of love, and how it leaves a legacy, a trail, behind (the ashes fertilize the soil, turning the land where their love ignited into land on which every kind of life flourishes) That’s why I love it.
2. Life is Beautiful (the ending)
Life is Beautiful is a film fable of love enduring under the most horrific circumstances. The film begins as a sweet romance set in
Several years later, after Guido has opened his bookstore and fathered a son, conditions in
Out of desperate love—real love, true love, deep love-- for his son, Guido tells him that all the events in the camp are a game, and if they follow the rules, they'll win a prize. To play, the little boy must stay out of sight, because they are in a competition against "the men who yell." The winner gets a real, full-size army tank. The Americans will bring it. He is to stay out of sight from the men who yell until the tanks arrive. But the boy isn't fooled, particularly when the other children begin to disappear. He tells his father that "they're making buttons and soap out of us." Yet he goes along with the game, perhaps because he’s innocent but also with the poignant implication that he's doing so not so much to hide from the truth as to keep up his father's morale. (It’s soul wrenching.)
The scenes that slayed me (I was bawling in the theater and squeezing all the color out of my husband’s big, sinewy hand)-- Guido maintains his story about the game right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near – he tells his son to stay in a sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his, before he wins.
After desperately trying to warn Dora about the trucks that go to the gas chambers, Guido is caught, taken away, and shot, but not before making his son laugh one last time—Guido acts like it’s part of the game, he clowns while at gunpoint—and, oh God, the varied emotions that play across his face because he does not want his son to be discovered hiding in the sweatbox. When I heard the gunshot, I totally lost it. The little boy manages to survive, and thinks he's won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp—his dad was right after all. The laugh his excitement at winning provokes is very much needed! A salve. At the end, the little boy is – mercifully-- reunited with his mother. And she knows. She knows.
Truly, the movie could have been unbearably sad without Benigni's comic grace and humanity. To me, the man is a true genius. The film handles a profoundly serious subject with a light touch, devoid of all sanctimony or saccharine. In the battle against evil and hatred, Benigni tells us that there are also the weapons of joy, love and imagination. The film’s title derives from
" Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”
3.
Even though I was horrified by the turn of events when Heathcliff returns to
She says to Nelly, “Did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? Whereas, if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise and place him out of my brother’s power.”
But that’s not the passage. This is --
Cathy says, "I cannot express it, but surely you and every body have a notion that there is , or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it. I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees-- my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being—so don’t talk of our separation again—"
Then, of course, he’s gone, having not heard that last passage, and she’s bereft—up all night waiting for him to come back, drenched from a storm, fits of passionate tears.
At the end, I also love the scenes between Cathy’s daughter, also named Cathy, and Hareton. Cathy admits to Nelly that she feels guilty for having mocked Hareton’s attempt to learn to read. One day, Hareton accidentally shoots himself, and is forced to remain indoors to recuperate. At first, he and Catherine quarrel, but they make up and agree to try to get along. To show her good will, Catherine gives Hareton a book, promising to teach him to read and never to mock him again. Nelly says that the two young people have gradually grown to love and trust each other. In the final chapter of the book, Nelly tells Lockwood that Heathcliff has since been buried, and that young Catherine and Hareton shall soon marry, on New Year’s Day. The young lovers return to the house from outside and Nelly says,
“They are afraid of nothing.”
My thought was, “Good lord, they’ve survived extreme cruelty, but risen from the ashes and found love.” I guess you could say the theme I love there is also life is beautiful.
4. Daughter of Fortune (the ending)
Born into a 19th-century society that values birthright above character, Eliza Sommers is an orphan of unknown heritage. She is raised in the British colony of
When she is not yet sixteen, Eliza falls in love with Joaquin Andieta, a poor yet terribly proud underling at her uncle's British Import and Export Company. Knowing that Rose, the spinster who raised her, has set her sights on a more socially exalted marriage, the girl conducts her love affair on the sly. When Joaquin announces he must journey to
Eliza knows that the only solution to her predicament is to follow Joaquin to California–hardly an easy feat for a respectable girl with no money. With the help of a Chinese cook, Eliza stows away on a northbound ship. The sea voyage alone nearly kills her, and only through the ministrations of Tao Chi'en, the Chinese cook who is really an accomplished physician, does she survive both a miscarriage and the passage. Somewhat unwillingly Tao Chi'en becomes her protector when they reach
This book was an Oprah book. During the book club discussion, Oprah said, “Speaking of happily ever after, if there's one complaint about Daughter of Fortune, it's the ending. ... There are people that want to know what happened. Does it mean that they are — that they're not?”
Well, I loved the end. And I’m sorry, Oprah, no disrespect, but of course they are! Here’s the deal with the end. Four years have gone by since Eliza left home. Eliza has decided to finally write to Rose, to tell the woman who raised her that she’s not dead.
“You want your family to find you," he said and something cracked in his voice.
She looked at him and realized that she had never been so close to anyone in this world as she was at that moment to Tao Chi’en. She felt the man in her own blood, with such ancient and fierce certainty that she marveled at the time she had spent by his side without realizing. She missed him even though she saw him every day. She longed for the carefree days when they were good friends, everything had seemed simpler then, but neither did she want to turn back. Now there was something unfinished between them, something much more complex and fascinating . . .
I love that scene but it gets better!
Cut to a scene later when Tao Chi’en sees her dressed up for a photo, and drops a bottle—which is very unlike him. They talk about the fact that she is no longer going to look for Joaquin. He comments that everyone who came to
“Why are you so unromantic, Tao? My God! Gallantry demands that you say you also found me.”
“ I would have found you anyway; it was predestined.”
(cutting a few lines of dialogue here, but hello, isn't that a great comeback on his part? )
“I am going to have my portrait taken to send to Miss Rose.”
“Can you have one made for me?”
This only makes sense, I suppose, if you know how unsentimental Tao is . . . he’s a good, honorable, brave man, but he’s not given to sweet, sappy, sentimental gestures. He wants a picture of her. He wants her!
Okay and now the ending . . . which is so unclear, apparently, to everyone, but not to me. As it turns out, Joaquin Murieta was an outlaw. His presumed remains and those of his sidekick, Three Finger Jack, are on display. Eliza goes to see the remains with Tao. Here’s the final passage in the book.
They stopped: she felt his grip grow stronger on hers; she gulped a mouthful of air and opened her eyes. She stared at the head for a few seconds and then let herself be led outside.
“Was it him?” asked Tao Chi’en.
“I am free,” she replied, holding tightly to Tao’s hand.
Okay, so that’s not hot monkey sex by any stretch of the imagination, but to me, the enduring friendship, the fact that she is now free in her mind-- to be herself, to follow her heart-- and then, the hands, the knowing grip at her time of need and the fact that she’s holding tightly onto his hand now that she’s “free,” that signifies real love, true companionship that will make it. To me.
5. Pride and Prejudice (Pemberly)
I love every scene between Darcy and Elizabeth—every scene—but I really liked the part when she’s at Pemberly and he arrives on the scene—
They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheecks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immoveable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party, and spoke to
And then he’s so sweet. Love him! Love her!
I also love at the end, when she wants Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. They’re rehashing and she says, “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”
“A man who had felt less, might.”
Okay, that one is a sweet, romantic, heartwarming pitter pat, pitter pat – but really, do you have any doubts that these two make it? Because there are so many courtships in the novel, I think that courtship takes on a profound, if often unspoken, importance in the novel. Each courtship becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as a means to social advancement). Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love grounded firmly in respect implies to me that Austen views love as something independent of rules and social forces, as something that can be captured only if both individuals are willing and able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society.
6. Anne and Gilbert (first kiss, finally!)
So if you read my ramblings-- previously mentioned -- at my post at Alys on Love, you’ll see that I had Anne Shirley and Gilert Blythe of the Anne of Green Gable series on the brain. It took me awhile to figure out why. I mean, c'mon! I pride myself on being a bit wilder than that! An earlier post, a Saturday Sixteen regarding intermediate/young adult fiction, may shed some light. You see, I was very bitter about Jo March’s choice. I liked Laurie so much more than old Professor Baehr (until I saw the movie version with Gabriel Byrne as the old professor, but by then I was an adult). Because of that, I think I was extra thrilled when Anne and Gilbert got together at long last.
During childhood, Anne and Gilbert were rivals—and he teased her about her red hair-- but at the end of the first book in the Anne of Green Gable series, Gilbert gives up his teaching position in the Avonlea School to work at White Sands School instead, thus enabling Anne to teach at the Avonlea School and stay at Green Gables all through the week to help Marilla after Mathew dies. After this kind act, Anne wholly forgives Gilbert and they become good friends—and I fell in love with Gilbert.
In the third book in the series, everyone is getting married, and Anne receives her fair share of proposals—the first from the brother of her childhood friend Jane Andrews, who uses his sister as an intermediary. Anne refuses, saddened and amused at once at this very unromantic first proposal. Charlie Sloane and Gilbert Blythe also propose to her, but she turns them both down.
Eventually, Anne meets her “prince charming”, Roy Gardner, when he lends her his umbrella during a storm. They court, although Anne cannot totally suppress jealousy over Christine Stuart, Gilbert's current beau. When
7. Natural Born Charmer (she's gone!)
I have to do one more, because I loved, loved, loved Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I have to include a love scene from a romance novel here. I feel compelled.
Chicago Stars quarterback, Dean Robillard is a bonafide sports superstar with a profitable side career as a buff billboard model for End Zone underwear. But as the child of a groupie-addict and a rock star who never acknowledged him, he has abandonment and trust issues.
Enter Blue Bailey, who he offers a ride while on a cross-country trip to his farm in Tennessee. When he meets her, she is dressed in a headless Beaver suit. She is actually a wandering portrait artist and the fatherless daughter of a world famous activist who was always too busy saving the world to raise her daughter. She also has abandonment and trust issues.
They end up spending the summer together. At the end of the summer, she’s ready to run, to leave before she’s left behind again. One thing leads to another, and she decides to stay on his farm throughout football season to prove her steadfastness. A picture of him kissing a model appears in a
She's gone. Her clothes aren't in their closet, and there are no signs of her living there. He’s devastated. His mom, who he has finally made peace with, calls. He drops his forehead into his hands.
“She’s not here, Mom,” he says unsteadily. “She ran.”
My heart sank. He of course has a terrible night. He believes he has lost his soul mate. He recounts all the mistakes he made. He takes a shower – and when he comes out, she’s sitting cross-legged on the bed and his knees go weak.
"Hey you," she says softly.
I love that moment. Turns out she had driven down to
They make love, of course, but one of the really cute, telling parts is that she wears a pink, lacy matching bra and panties set—she has always dressed defensively in combat fatigues, black biker boots, drab colors,--to Dean's dismay--too afraid to be vulnerable and romantic, too afraid to let anyone see her sweetness, her inner self, her romantic, steadfast side, her "pinkness." She needs armor. But, finally, the armor is gone. I thought that was a nice touch.
The internal conflict, their abandonment issues, was so well done that the happy resolution was really satisfying to me. Plus, I simply adored the hero and heroine. As for happily ever afters, the book ends with a wedding.
Cheers and happy writing -- and reading! Alyson
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