DAMN YOU, Diane Lane!?!

I have to add a third redhead to my mention of Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman. This wasn’t supposed to be a theme but my weekend was invaded by the three of them inadvertently. As previously mentioned, Nicole Kidman, is a true redhead and Julia is a real person so that brings me to Diane Lane and I’m going to have to go with this – who isn’t really either a real redhead or a real person.

Hey! I winced, too, because if Diane Lane is in a movie I am compelled to watch. The problem is that I’ve also had the misfortune of seeing her in interviews and after all of her over-the-top, hopeless romantic roles I can’t make the adjustment and like the real person the way I love her portrayals.

Per design, every movie where I see her insecure but holding on to her dreams of loving and living to the fullest makes everything about her the most desirable woman on earth. Last night, it was “Under the Tuscan Sun.” As one reviewer remarked – just once they’d like to see her in a movie where she isn’t rich, has real life problems, and has to take out her own garbage. But, that wouldn’t provide the escape we go to movies to enjoy. And, in fairness, she often almost seems like an everywoman character. Just not any woman I’ve ever actually encountered. That’s where I have to shake myself awake and tear myself away from both the emotional and physical attraction to an actress and return to a world where I can’t afford the eye candy.

This just sucks the life out of me every time. Romance makes promises it knows it will never keep. What happens is the specter of expectation tears off a piece of our own soul and shows all the sparkling beauty of a piece of self that is about to be lost forever – but, we think it is something from outside our self. We think we are reaching for something more – something beyond; but then when the puppet show passes and we awake from the dream we find we’ve been left with our pockets turned out and our heart raw and exposed.

So today while I lick my wounds and promise myself I’m smarter and won’t get fooled, ever, in only hours I will catch the glimpse of a passing woman and be ready to fall all over again. And, the next time I hear Diane Lane’s name or voice or see that compelling face I’ll be in front of the screen and succumbing to the anesthesia. If, as according to Carly Simon, there’s more room in a broken heart than I’m as spacious as the great outdoors.