I’ve never been alone for Valentine’s Day. Despite my reputation, I’m not one for grandiose gestures. Instead, I take comfort in the joys of a nice dinner and welcome company. It’s a tradition that goes back to when I was eighteen, saving my meager earnings to take my partner out for a meal. I’ve gotten a little more posh and selective about where I go for these annual dinners since 2007, but the spirit remains the same. It means a lot to me to have had people in my life that I was able to share those moments with; moments of ease and tranquility, to celebrate love and good fortune.
The Salt Shed, in collaboration with the Music Box Theatre and the Chicago International Film Festival, present what I consider to be one of the more discomforting options available on Valentine’s Day 2024, Crying at The Shed. The new film festival begins with a screening of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This is part of a double-feature that will also showcase Chad Hartigan’s excellent and underseen Little Fish. The torrent of emotionally crippling romances follow for the next two days, which include screenings of Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, and finally Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy.
I’ve wept oceans over these films throughout my lifetime. It’s a collection of some of the most emotionally harrowing and powerful films ever made, at least within the last forty years. With the exception of Hartigan’s film, I’ve seen all of these on numerous occasions, some in the double-digits by now. They’ve shaped the way I look at romance, for better and certainly for worse. They’re films with images that ornate my household, reminding me of all the travails of love itself. They’re films that I’ve shared with the same partners that I would sit at a dinner table with on Valentine’s Day. And they’re the films that I go back to when I’m at my loneliest, after those relationships failed, to commiserate, empathize, and ultimately be comforted by.
