There is a great deal that is disordered and wrong with modern American Culture.  At the same time, the more films I watch, the more I realize that it and Catholicism are speaking two different languages when describing the same thing. Sometimes they run counter to one another, other times they are parallel.  I appreciate better the moments when they intersect.  In either case, I am struck most by these circumstances when the subject is love.  As I scribble my notes while watching anything I plan to review, I rarely miss a moment that references love.  My pen is busiest when they wax philosophical.  Far too often, be it literature, the moving picture, music, or some other medium, love and sex are conflated.  There are two people are connecting, they share a lot in common, and the next logical move is to the bedroom, or so the Hollywood script usually tells us.  Unfortunately, Love Again (2023) follows this all too familiar progression.  Yet, there are some great ways in which the ideas here and those to which this Catholic subscribe mirror each other, and I am excited to discuss them.

Mira Ray (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) does not have to Love Again at the beginning because she is currently head over heels for her boyfriend, John (Arinzé Kene).  We see their special bond that is about to blossom into an engagement as they meet at a coffee shop.  Their happiness is quickly dashed when he gets up to leave.  With her looking on, he is struck and killed outside by a drunk driver.  Two years go by and her sister, Suzy Ray (Sofia Barclay), and roommate demands that the still mourning Mira move back with her to the city.  As Mira re-accumulates to her old life and dealing with all the revisited memories of John, we next meet Rob Burns (Sam Heughan).  He is a music critic for a fictional New York City periodical, but what really defines him at this moment is his recently called off wedding.  This turn of events was not his choice, and his sleeping in and otherwise depressed nature are byproducts of being left at the altar by his fiancée.  His sulking is unacceptable in the eyes his boss who wants a promised story about Celine Dion (as herself) completed by the next deadline.  To ensure that Rob stays on task, he is given a work phone.  Later, on a later dark and stormy night (yes, it is as cliché as it sounds), Mira is taking some advice and trying to talk to John’s spirit over a glass of wine.  Feeling the strangeness of the experience (who knew new age spiritualism could be that way?!), she decides to instead text his old phone number to pour out the ache in her heart.  Following a particularly powerful bolt of lightning, these messages begin appearing on the cell given to Rob by the paper.  With his own sense of loss still fresh upon his heart, he feels connected to the messages, or at least the voice behind them.  They become a distraction for him, which he carries with him into his planned interview with the Canadian pop singer.  Instead of discussing her music, their conversation turns to love.  He ends up revealing the texts he has been receiving and how he is drawn to the person sending them.  While she agrees that it is a little weird, she also sees it as not all that out of the ordinary as with how she met her late husband.  Thus encouraged, he actively looks for opportunities to meet Mira.  His first tip comes when she mentions that she is going on a blind date at a local bar.  Though he does not make a move, he is able to figure out her identity.  The next clue as to where to find her is when she sends to her late fiancé the lyrics to her favorite opera.  To finally come face-to-face with her, Rob decides to go to every showing of the production until they meet.  When this happens, he manages to get her number. Seeing the possibility of a new romance, he knows that he must eventually tell her about the texts.  As with most of these kinds movies, he cannot bring himself to do anything that might jeopardize what they feel for each other at the earliest stages of their relationship.  He tries to admit what he knows a couple times, but each time the moment comes, he changes the subject.  Christianity does not have the monopoly on truth, but it should be noted that there is no fooling God.  Neither could he keep this hidden from Mira for long.  After spending the night at his place doing adult stuff, she finds the texts collected on his open laptop.  Feeling betrayed, she tells him that they are no longer going to see one another.  Not giving up, he decides to write a story for the paper, not necessarily about Celine, but about how the singer had inspired him to do what the title suggests following being jilted by his ex-fiancée.  It ends with him saying that he will meet Mira at a place where they had danced on their first official date.  When word gets out about the piece’s theme, Celine calls Mira, who had hired the children’s book artist to design promotional material for her tour, to advise the younger woman.  It also takes a conversation with the imagined form of John before Mira to also take the eponymous step.  By this point, Rob has figured out that she might be at the opera theater.  This turns out to be the correct move, and we fade to black with them kissing.

As alluded to in the introduction to this review of Love Again and elsewhere, there is much that is familiar in the march to the end.  You had to know at some point that Mira was going to find out about the texts.  What the predictability does not take away from, though, is the movie’s heart.  There were more than a few times that I was happy as a practicing Catholic with the discussion of love.  To understand it from this perspective, you have to examine the situation from the premise that “God is love,” which has been repeated by many Catholic thinkers like St. Pope John Paul the Great.  These words encapsulate much of what is said on the matter throughout the film.  There are three moments I would like to highlight. The first pertains to the often cited 1 Corinthians 13:4, where it talks about love being patient and kind.  This correlates with some of Celine’s advice to Mira in the wake of discovering Rob has been reading the texts sent to John.  Looking back on her experiences, Celine comments that when you are in love, you work through problems.  This is not simply about smoothing over differences.  It involves forgiveness.  We are called to be Christ-like, and He wipes the slate clean for us not just for the sake of harmonious interactions, but because He loves us.  That ideal is a part of the plan God has for us, which, taken with the notion that God is love, is interchangeable with another moment when it is said that “love has a plan for us.”  There is a great deal of solace to be had from knowing this is true, particularly when you understand that it is God that is in control.  Further, everything that has happened or will happen unfolds according to His design.  This does not contradict the concept of free will, but neither is that the focus.  It is about something bigger than you and me, which is that love ultimately wins.  As Christians, we believe that giving ourselves over to God is the same as saying that we give ourselves to love.  Doing so leads to eternity in Heaven, which is being united with love for all eternity.

Does Love Again care about eternity?  I would guess no, but my job is to underscore for you where movies can shine a light on a path that leads to God.  The film is cheesy and predictable, your standard romantic comedy fare, if a bit more serious.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed listening to how love is described throughout because so much of it aligns with what I hold dear as a Catholic.  It is not perfect, but it is worth a watch.