Predictably yours, Nights in Rodanthe

Once upon a time, a man who broke my heart said, “Maybe I’ve served my purpose in your life.” It wasn’t something I understood at the moment he said it, but I eventually learned to accept that some people are really just meant to stay for a short while and yet leave a mark more lasting than that of some people who hang around forever. This is what came to mind as I was watching the last few scenes of Nights in Rodanthe.

In the latest of Nicholas Sparks’ book-turned-movies, troubled doctor meets troubled housewife during a four-day vacation in some breathtakingly beautiful and unforgettably picturesque place — one that has a “Blue Room” one can forever refer to in one’s memoirs as the place where great love was found or felt or had or, well, consummated — and the encounter changes their lives forever or, better yet, “gives them their lives back.”

Richard Gere plays Dr. Paul Flanner to Diane Lane’s Adrienne Willis. This is their third team up—the first being in the crime drama The Cotton Club (1984) and the second being in another crime drama Unfaithful (2002)—in their first romantic film together. They’re aging gracefully, methinks. Diane, especially.

Spoiler alert! If you don’t want to know what happens in this film, stop reading.

Dr. Flanner is in the small North Carolina coastal town to speak to the husband of a patient who died on the operating table. Adrienne, on the other hand, is helping out a friend by tending to her inn over the weekend. They’ve both recently gone through separations and they’re both struggling to make their relationships with their children work. Dr. Flanner intends to follow his son Mark (James Franco, in an uncredited role) to South America, where he is working as a doctor to poor people. Adrienne is trying to decide if she should get back together with her husband (Christopher Meloni), who had left her for another woman, for the sake of their children. They happen to be the only people in the inn (it’s off season) and some nice dinners together, a semi-passionate tiff, and a storm throw them into each other’s arms. Yes, in the Blue Room.

They spend a couple of lovey-dovey days together, then Paul has to leave for South America and Adrienne, who has decided not to go back to her husband, still has to go back to her children. Duties beckon—and, of course, children have to come first. They spend a couple of months exchanging love letters, getting to know each other and becoming better people in the process, and dreaming about the day they will be together. When that day comes, Paul doesn’t show up. I’ll give you two guesses why.

It’s pretty formulaic, yes, and it doesn’t take a half a brain to predict that the film would end with the wild horses that was the film’s metaphor for faith in love and romance and second chances at the latter part of one’s life. But did I tear up at the end? Well, it wasn’t The Notebook kind of tears, not even A Walk to Remember, but yes, I did.

That’s Nicholas Sparks for you. He has perfected the formula for romantic tear-jerkers and he knows the right buttons to push, so much so that even if you’re a little bit distracted while watching the film because your bladder’s close to bursting, tears still trickle down right on cue.

Then again, the thing with romantic formulas is that it’s straight out of the familiar and tugs at your secret longings. It’s pretty cathartic. You cry because you want something like what you saw in the film: something strong, something passionate, something life-changing. You want that big fight before the loving: your rage transforming into another equally passionate feeling. You want your own clichéd love story: the kind that has you writing sappy love letters talking about tracing a finger on the contours of your beloved’s body in a Blue Room you want to visit again. Minus the unexpected death, of course.

That would be catharsis of another form: you cry out of relief because not having the kind of love the protagonists have, or, at least, not having it anymore, you feel comforted that you won’t be experiencing that kind of loss either.

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