I'm an English geek

So, I just watched the movie Wimbledon. I have a few things to say about it. First of all, can we please someday see a movie about a beautiful romance that happens in more than 2 weeks? Maybe I'm cynical, but I think that falling in love with someone that quickly is a delusion. After watching Garden State, where the characters fall in love in less than a week, and now this movie, I'm feeling like the rising divorce rate has been accounted for. I consider myself a romantic, but the love story I'd like to see involves people who take the time to get to know each other before declaring their mutual love. These people each know the faults of their partner, but love them anyway. They work together as a team, and while they have problems, they work through them. Maybe this wouldn't make for an exciting movie (so maybe throw in a car chase scene or something) but at least we could relate to it.

When I wasn't getting mad at the totally unrealistic love story in Wimbledon, I was thinking about how this movie hearkens back to Medieval romances. The whole idea of courtly love was there, albeit in a slightly modified form. During the final scene, when Peter is playing for the tournament victory (sorry for the spoiler, but it's not like you don't see it coming), and all through the movie actually, it's made clear that his inspired playing comes from his relationship with Lizzie. It made me think of Medieval knights at tournaments, playing to earn the favour of their ladies. I was particularly reminded of Lancelot when L. is fighting Malegeant, and it looks bad, and then he looks up towards the tower where Guenevere is watching, and comes back to win, mostly because this is exactly what happens to Peter (sorry again). It is clear that he wants to win his tournament (this one's a tennis tournament, not jousting, but it's pretty similar all the same) to do honour to his lady. He gets his inspiration from his lady, and his winning is tied to his reputation (endorsement contracts etc.) and to keeping his lady's love. I was expecting Lizzie to give Peter some sort of love token that he would tie on his lance, er...tennis raquet, during the match. The fact that the final match was between the two men who were fighting for the lady's heart throughout the story also made another connection back to courtly love themes (if courtly love actually exists, but that's a whole other debate), and it reminded that societal definitions of gender have not actually changed that much since the Middle Ages. The woman is still the prize to be earned through battle, while her own trials are either not considered, or are made secondary. We do learn at the end of the film that Lizzie goes on to win Wimbledon twice, but we never see this happen. It's a postscript. Her own battle is secondary. I found the links to Medieval romance to be very interesting.

All that being said, it was an enjoyable movie, for its genre. I'm still not a fan of Kirsten Dunst, but she annoyed me much less in this film than she did in the Spiderman movies, so that's good. More importantly, her love interest, the knight of the tennis court, was British (suitably), and he was of course a very hende knight, courteous in all respects.