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 arlier this year, anxious to hear the next Charlie Kaufman script and primed for the pyrotechnics of video vet Michel Gondry, I headed to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with a bunch of friends. You might know how the story goes: Jim Carrey plays Joel, a man so torn up by his love for Clementine (Kate Winslet) that he hires a high-tech firm to surgically remove his memories of her. After some mobius twists and turns, some surrealist skits and comic sketches, Carrey gets to the bottom of things — and gets the girl. Gondry's time-jumping, heartbreaking film had its problems — Carrey, for one — but it also had its share of little wonders: brilliant supporting performances by Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood, Gondry's edit-room wizardry, and, most importantly, something like sincerity — a quality rare in both Hollywood directors and hipster auteurs. I bought it, anyway. I got chills toward the end; I went all warm and fuzzy. But the spell broke as soon as the lights went up. My friends barreled out of the theater, and by the time we hit the bright lobby, the conversation was popping like this: It's no Being John Malkovich. Too gimmicky. Jim Carrey was awful. What was up with Winslet's hair? Wish I could erase a few boyfriends. What's up with Winslet's accent? Wish I could see Mark Ruffalo in his tightie-whities again. I hated the scene with the bed on the beach. Anybody want to get a drink? Outnumbered, I mumbled: Who cares if it's gimmicky if most of the gimmicks work? Come on — when's the last time you saw a romance with half a brain that wasn't set in the nineteenth century? Or that didn't star Hugh Grant? Carrey wasn't all that bad, was he? And, finally caught lying to myself, I gave up: Yeah, there's a bar across the street. Now that Eternal Sunshine is on DVD, I'm reminded of how some films are best-suited for watching on the couch, preferably with a date, a drink, and some suspended disbelief. In this new column called The Date DVD, I'll pick a new disc or two each week and argue for why a film like Eternal Sunshine, or the punk documentary Ramones Raw (also out this week), would make a perfect excuse for getting someone into your apartment . After all, movie theaters may no longer be the best place to cuddle up in the dark. At the very least, the DVD date is a more direct route into your partner's pants. Eternal Sunshine isn't the most perfect film, or the sunniest; but it's a perfect date DVD, with a messy, spastic vibe that catches the flash and mayhem of falling head over heels. It nods to romantic comedy, first by casting a box-office comic and Titanic's sweetheart in the leads, then unspools as a kind of sly sci-fi critique of the genre, which tends to wash and fluff romance into something as light and bright as Kate Hudson's curls. Instead, Gondry gives us this scruffy, orange-haired Clementine with her brunette roots showing, and this gangly, skittish Joel in pilled sweaters and greasy hair: two lovers so hurt by each other they signed up to have their memories erased. Unlike those romances that flash back from old age and fast-forward through first dates to kids (i.e. The Notebook); Gondry's film cross-cuts bookstore courtships with bedroom breakdowns, overlapping in kinetic flashes that catch that crazy feeling of the first or fifteenth date. You know, when you try to sit perfectly still while your your mind is humming, worrying about the last date, wondering about the next. For me, a quintessential romance sequence is the sight of Joel and Clementine clutching hands and racing through Joel's memories. In a visual, over-the-top — yes, gimmicky — way, Joel opens up and lets her crawl around in there. There, the typical storyline of romantic comedies — that if two people get their acts together, they'll be together forever — just unravels. Carrey and Winslet never really solve anything; they just hold on and get to know each other a little better. Which is an awfully cheesy thing to say in a crowded lobby. That's why I wish I'd seen Eternal Sunshine after dinner, with my date, in the dark of my living room instead. It's rare that a film so ambitious comes along and doesn't leave its heart behind. I'd like to think that my date would have swooned as well, and that, at the very least, after seeing this complete wreck of a male lead get Kate Winslet, I might not have looked so bad. n° 
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