Love Again

One question that I always ask myself is, is it really possible to move on from our past lovers, or is there a part of us that will always be connected to them in some way? I have always been interested in human relationships and their effect on people, and I aim to spark a conversation about that through this script. 

My script follows a guy and a girl, Mary and Matthew, both in their late twenties, as they meet again after three years of no contact after their messy breakup. They contemplate the ethicality of their speaking and spending time with each other and finally try to seek closure after many years. My main purpose in creating such a character-driven script was for the reader to understand that neither Mary nor Matthew are bad people. Humans are flawed and all of us end up hurting people we love at some point in our lives. Throughout the script, the reasoning behind their breakup will slowly unravel and it will raise speculation in the reader. Why did the characters do what they did? And a larger question, why do we hurt the people we love so much? My vision with this script is to make the reader question the morals of these characters and then apply that to real life. 

The reason I am fascinated with human relationships is because of their trajectories. You can love someone so much but because of circumstances and differing life goals, you could end up not working out. A lot of relationships end not because of not loving each other, but because of conflicting futures or lifestyles. So, is it really possible to stop loving someone completely after you break up, or will a part of you always hold that person close? To be honest, I don’t even know the answer to that question but I aim to make the reader draw their own conclusions about that question. 

I have always been someone who loves a character-driven story way more than a plot-driven story- especially in romance plots like these. My biggest inspiration for this script is

the brilliant romance film trilogy by Richard Linklater. It begins with “Before Sunrise”, then “Before Sunset”, then finally ends with “Before Midnight”. There are only two main characters: Celine and Jesse. I specifically am most inspired by the “Before Sunset” film because Jesse and Celine find each other after many years and spend the afternoon together. The film has no cuts and follows them in real time. I hope that my script will echo parts of this film, like raising questions about the nature of romantic relationships, but will also have vastly different characters. 

Overall, I just aim for this script to raise a lot of these questions about human relationships because they are fascinating to me!