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Love and marriage at the movies

Discussed in this essay:

I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies, by Jeanine Basinger. Knopf. 432 pages. $30.

Before Midnight, directed by Richard Linklater. Sony Pictures Classics. 108 minutes.

Couples speak their own language, an invented tongue that deepens or dies out over time. Couples in the movies must convince us of this, their culture of two, whose hidden etymologies extend far below what is said or shown. It is a task undertaken in the hope of making love real for an audience; but not too real, not so real as to…

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is the author of This Is Running for Your Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

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