Nothing is harder to explain than the feeling of being in love. There’s no formula. No magical path or yellow brick road. No app some avaricious nerd in Silicon Valley can create to help you work it out – though I can’t imagine that will stop them from trying.
The trouble is that it’s not something you can just explain or whittle down to a set list of factors. You’re meant to just sort of know. And if you don’t, well, you might be in a tricky situation, particularly if you’re in a long-term relationship. That’s the premise of The Life List, a new romcom from Netflix that has soared to the number one spot around the world.
Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Lori Nelson Spielman, the film tells the story of Alex (played by Sofia Carson), a young woman who’s coasting through life with a job in her mother’s cosmetics company and a boyfriend who develops zombie video games. The death of her mother (Connie Britton) to cancer prompts a shift, not least because, in her will, Alex is given nothing besides a DVD and a scrap of paper dubbed “the life list” of goals and dreams she’d written down as a child.
In the DVD, her mother explains that in order to access her inheritance, Alex has to complete everything on the list, which includes tasks ranging from the innocuous (“get a tattoo” and “camp under a full moon” ) to the lofty (“make peace with dad” and “find true love”). According to Alex’s mother, there’s one surefire way to test that last one if you’re currently in a relationship, and that’s to ask yourself the following four questions: “Is he kind? Can I tell him everything in my heart? Does he help me become the best version of myself? Can I imagine him as the father of my children?”
It’s by answering these questions that Alex is able to see that she needs to break up with her gamer boyfriend – it’s also the thing that leads her to her actual “true love” later on in the film. Ostensibly, it couldn’t be a cheesier concept, one that you’d be forgiven for thinking was dreamt up by someone who typed “write a teary romcom” into ChatGPT. And yet, The Life List is having a major impact on viewers.
After test screenings, the director, Adam Brooks, claimed that people felt inspired by the film to make changes in their own lives. “He would say that there were so many people that would [tell him], ‘I ended up breaking up with my boyfriend,’ or ‘I ended up changing or quitting my job,’” said Carson in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “That’s the beauty of this film. It’s so much more than a romcom. I think so many of us, including myself, tend to forget the little girl that was a fearless dreamer.”
I’m the last person to succumb to this kind of Hallmark nonsense. I can’t bear kitsch little concepts or hacks that purport to change someone’s life in “just a few short steps”. But this film made me sob and, putting the gargantuan hangover I was dealing with while watching it aside, I found it unlocked something that got me reflecting on all sorts of aspects of my life. The four questions, in particular, seemed to resonate.
Not because I felt they were apt or even applicable to my own life (I’m not in a relationship). But because I find the idea of asking yourself four simple questions to work out whether you actually love someone incredibly soothing. I also think it would work, too, as it does for Alex. Obviously, the nature of the questions will change, person-to-person, depending on a wide range of factors, not least someone’s sexuality and whether or not they can even have children, let alone if they want them.
But I do think in today’s social media-soaked landscape, where we’re constantly being bombarded with 20-second videos about icks, red flags, and love-bombing, it can be hard to know what we really think or feel. Everything is forcing us to be more reactive, to act impulsively and according to someone else’s experiences or opinions. Sometimes it’s important to take stock and reflect on who we are and what we want. And having some sort of roadmap to help us do that can be life-changing.
The most relatable thing about Alex is that, for most of the film, she’s lost. No longer connected to herself, her dreams, needs, and desires, she is sort of wandering around, just hoping for the best. I think that’s something all of us can identify with. We are always looking for the next quick fix, or transformative piece of tech that’s going to revolutionise the way we live our lives. But that’s how we wind up making bad decisions, acting out of impulse and social conditioning rather than looking at what we actually want. And when it comes to relationships, it’s what makes us choose partners that aren’t right for us; sometimes it’s easier to simply go with the flow and pretend like it’s making you happy instead of asking the hard questions about what it really is that you need. Hence why so many of us settle for less than we deserve – consider this viral TikTok video from last summer that had thousands of people speculating on whether most of us “settle” in relationships because we’re afraid of being alone.
I also feel a degree of nostalgia towards the idea of living your life according to a childhood list of dreams. Much like the four questions, I know it’s cheesy. But I do think social media has meant that a lot of us are spending so much time trying to present a certain version of ourselves to the world that we move further away from the person we actually are, forgetting what it is that makes us tick. We get so caught up in trying to optimise every part of ourselves that we neglect to acknowledge and celebrate the parts that just are who we are, singing songs of innocence over songs of experience.
A childhood list could remind us of who we were before any of this nonsense mattered. It’s the reason why therapists are always talking about being in touch with your “inner child”. And while it’s easy – and a little tempting – to roll our eyes, there’s clearly something to it.
Who knows? I might even write a life list of my own. If I do, I’m sure it’ll be something I wind up writing about. Watch this space.
#questions #weve #true #love
