Warning: Spoilers ahead!
If you haven’t already heard, our favorite Chicanx actress, Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez, stars in a new Netflix original movie, Someone Great. I’m a huge fan of rom-coms, and the trailer for the movie made it seem like Someone Great was exactly that: a sappy, predictable love story between a guy and a girl who were fated to be together forever. Except it wasn’t.
In fact, it’s the total opposite plot arc of a romance movie. Right at the start of Someone Great, Gina’s character, Jenny was dumped by the love of her life because she planned to move from New York City to San Francisco for her dream job, and he didn’t want to be in a long distance relationship. They were a couple for nine years, and the movie does a great job realistically telling their love story through Jenny’s flashbacks which are triggered by a song or place. That same thing often happens with us in real life. A particular song, movie scene, or experience can bring back memories of someone. We might have spent a lot of time with that person, or only knew them briefly, but one thing is the same: they impacted our lives in such a great way that only one small thing has the power to instantly trigger our brains to remember them.
In Jenny’s first flashbacks during the film, we see in the beginning that their relationship was beautiful, and she longs for those happy memories again. The more she thought about the happy memories the more she wanted to get back together with him, even going lengths to get tickets for a music festival she knew he was surely going to attend. I honestly expected that she would give up the job in San Francisco and the movie would be over as soon as they reunited again. But as the movie went on, Jenny started getting different flashbacks. Those flashbacks reminded her that their relationship wasn’t perfect, and they had more problems before they knew they might have to tackle long distance. This aspect of the movie definitely reminded me of a quote in 500 Days of Summer (also a great break-up movie): “Look, I know you think she was the one, but I don’t. Now, I think you’re just remembering the good stuff. Next time you look back, I, uh, really think you should look again.” It just emphasizes the point that when we miss someone, we tend to only recall the better memories when in reality, there were some serious red flags that prove it was probably best we parted ways with them.
In the end, Someone Great was indeed a love story, just not one between two people. It’s a movie about a young woman falling in love with herself again, because she realized she needed to choose herself. Sometimes we meet people that are only in our lives for the task of teaching us lessons that would shape us to be better for our future. It can be hard to let go when the lesson’s over, especially if we’ve spent years knowing and loving someone, but in the end, we can come out of it stronger. Jenny spent so many of her most formative years with her boyfriend that she didn’t really know how to be alone again.
Not only because of the countless relatable scenes, I loved Someone Great because it reminds us to choose ourselves. Movies like this one should really be watched more often because the traditional romance movies we’re used to can sometimes put an erroneous idea of love in our heads. They tend to portray love as something perfect, and also something necessary we need for ourselves to be completely happy when that isn’t the case for either. The more we decide to choose ourselves, the more we become comfortable with who we are instead of being co-dependent on external factors for happiness, which can only really be unleashed by ourselves. As young women in our twenties continuing to navigate life, we won’t really be okay until we can be okay with being alone, or at least content in who we are as an individual.