Potential movie-goers may be deterred by the less-than encouraging reviews and reports of Leap Year, a 2010 film starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. According to most assessments, it’s unfunny, simplistic, and cliche. A facile reading might lead one to conclude that it is yet another remake of the same romantic plot that has been circulating around Hollywood for years. But really, Leap Year is one plucky little film. Instead of bowing to Hollywood’s ideal rom com, the story of Leap Year attempts to redefine the love story on screen. It takes the modern models and turns them upside down, and demands something more substantial, which looks suspiciously traditional, for a love story. What at first appears to be an Amy Adams-chick flick for teen-age dates turns out to be a revolution in cinematic romances. The creators of Leap Year start by renouncing current cinematic mores, and then proceed to rework the path to love in a one hour and forty minute film. In essence, it describes a move from modern to traditional ways. Talk about gutsy.
Leap Year begins its subtle crusade with its background assumption, something we all tend to forget. Most modern romances run on the assumption that marriage is gratuitous and unnatural. Its not the normal way of things. When a woman wants to get married, she’s insecure and dissatisfied with their relationship as it is. In Leap Year, by contrast, marriage is seen as the normal way of things; when people truly love each other, they want to get married. Not once in the film is Anna’s desire to get married questioned but instead we are expected to stand on her side as she expects her boyfriend to propose. We all know that she wants him to marry her because she knows that that’s the way a true love story works, she knows that he really loves her if he wants to marry her. It’s also never suggested, in fact it is denied outright, that Anna wants her boyfriend to propose so he’s “stuck with her”. From the very beginning, we can tell Jeremy doesn’t love Anna because he hasn’t proposed. Consciously or unconsciously, we end up on Declan’s side because, in this film, love is expressed through marriage. Leap Year doesn’t set out to prove that marriage is right and normal, it begins with that as an accepted point. Anna’s search, the heart of the tale, is not for marriage, but for a good marriage; the fact that it’s marriage she seeks is never the question.
The film’s next move in its redefinition of the romance lies in its denial of the “opposites attract” ideal that rampages in Hollywood. Leap Year claims that successful marriages happen between those who share the same values and view of the world. We see this in Anna’s journey to find, not who she wants, but who wants the same things out of life that she does. From the very beginning, it’s obvious that one of the most important criteria for Anna is that her boyfriend share her principles. She tells Jeremy at their dinner, “I’m just glad we want the same things.” She wants a man who will share her life, who believes what she believes about family and marriage. She believes that Jeremy is that guy; that he’s, if not on the same page, at least in the same book. And most of her frustrations come from her slow discovery that Jeremy, in the end, doesn’t share her beliefs. In the apartment scene towards the end of the movie, she discovers that Jeremy doesn’t share her views on marriage, a key element to a good married life, or anything else. She believes it’s essential and the normal way of things; Jeremy’s attitude is, “Why the h--l not? I mean, we’d have gotten around to it eventually.". Anna, as we see in her time at the Bed and Breakfast, wants a home; Jeremy wants a showroom in the form of a Davenport apartment. Anna wants a man who will care for her, and yet Jeremy never once even offers to come and get her on her struggle towards Dublin and when Jeremy’s 60 seconds come along, she sees that he cares not for her, but for himself and the components that make up his successful life. Anna truly does care about family; she still feels that it’s her duty to make time for her father, even though she’s hurt by his irresponsibility when she was a child. But we can tell that Jeremy doesn’t care enough about Anna to feel her pain; instead, he resents her father taking Anna’s attention off of him and has absolutely no sense of duty to family, as she does. By the end of the movie, Anna has realized that Jeremy isn’t like her at all, he’s her exact opposite. Jeremy isn’t the kind of man she wants because his values are completely opposed to hers. And instead of being drawn towards her opposite, she turns away from it, knowing that a marriage of opposites equals disaster.
On the other hand, in Ireland Anna meets Declan, a man who at first appears to be Anna’s exact opposite. He’s rough, not as decorous as Jeremy, and he appears to be everything Anna has shunned her whole life. But as Anna gets to know Declan and discovers the kind of man he is, she finds that he shares her values. She learns that he was once engaged, and then his fiance ran away with his best friend. He was in love, and therefore proposed to his girlfriend. He believes, as she does, that love equals marriage. He wants to “make plans” with his future spouse, in contrast to the modern idea of living in spontaneity. He wants to spend the rest of his life with someone he can share plans with, someone who is like-minded. Declan, like Anna, also wants a home and family. He not only wants to be married and sees marriage as the natural result of being in love, but also believes that in order to be a true man he must care for those he loves, as must any other man. When Anna tells him how her father failed to take care of her when she was young, to explain why she is always controlling things, Declan truly feels for her. “I’m sorry,” he says, “A father is someone you should be able to rely on.” She looks at him in shock, not so much because he is “being nice”, but because he shares her values. Anna believes that a father and husband should care for his family, that they should be his first concern; Declan heartily agrees with her. He later informs her that, if he had 60 seconds to grab his most important possession, it would be his mother’s Claddagh ring, which he gave to his former fiance. Anna then sees that his first concern would be for this heirloom, or rather, the woman wearing it. He puts his first thoughts on his loved ones. By the end of the picture, Anna understands that Declan is the man who truly shares her values, and that they could work together to create a beautiful life.
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