Is Love a Drug?

The short answer to 'Is love a drug?': Yes. It can be. In the beginning especially. Until you get past all the endorphins playing ping pong with your heart, and settle in to a nice game of chess anyway.

As to my sub-heading: OK, not exactly. The film Love & Other Drugs uses Viagra, and yes other drugs, as the backdrop for the rom-com love-story-with-disease primary plot. The audience settled in, sans cell phones by the way — they confiscated them from us en masse before we entered the theater! The lesson being: if you can't behave, you get a 'time out ' from your toys. So we were all summarily punished for someone else's (in my case anyway) sins. Note to self: Resume wearing a watch.

But I digress…

I was interested in seeing the film because I knew it was Jill Clayburgh's last. Alas, she is in it, along with George Segal, only briefly in the beginning, as mom-and-pop establishing the family dynamic. But it's nice to have established actors anchor it that way from the outset.

So you feel you're on solid ground. But the plot doesn't need Viagra to keep, um, interest high (sorry). The two highly engaging, highly attractive and talented leads, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, keep the plot aloft (sorry again) with a well-written script and a firm hand (sorry again) in director Edward Zwick.

Remembers, Zwick's mind's been behind beloved films like Glory and Shakespeare in Love, and the TV series, thirtysomething, so he knows how to keep the ball in the air (I'm not apologizing anymore).

Plus, there's lots of (what a friend used to term ) nakedidity, sex, and humor. In fact in one subsubsubplot/bit…oh never mind — I hate being a spoiler. But reflecting back on what I'd seen, I realized how packed the film is. Just when you think you're in familiar, predictable territory, there's a subtle twist, as well as some poignant and clever insights.

This was echoed by the woman next to me whom I turned to to ask if she'd recommend it to friends. Reason being, our age group is only supposed to like It's Complicated, Something's Gotta Give, and that ilk. And I do, but since these are (too) few and far between… The starring couple is obviously younger, but not cloyingly so. So the response I got was an unqualified yes, but both the women and her husband (late 50s/early 60s) launched into the medical aspects of the film — the backdrop I mentioned, which is a layered, textured fabric as much a part of the plot as the love story.

The husband had just lost a college friend to Ann Hathaway's character's disease — Parkinson's. And the wife had a lot to say about the pharmaceutical industry, health insurance, as well as the " little ironies" that laced the film. "By the way," she suddenly said, "my gynecologist said Viagra is killing older women" What? "The tissue is too soft for all that hard pushing." Oh dear. "There should be more cuddling." That sounds nice... although I wondered if she knew about Zestra.

At the talkback afterward with Zwick and screenwriter Charles Randall, piquant points were raised. Zwick mused about why Clayburgh accepted the role — quietly dealing with leukemia as she did for 20 years, while maintaining a vibrant career and family life, perhaps the material resonated with her.

And limning the universality of the situation, Zwick noted that, the fact is, if we're in a long-term relationship, at some point one person is going to become ill before the other.

Which raises the tangential question: Would you want to know everything that's going to happen to you ahead of time?

In the meantime we just keep finding ways to love each other, deal with the ping-pong, the ups and downs, and the hopefully long-term chess game.

Related stories:

Jill Clayburgh's Serene Style

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Top 5 Reasons See It's Complicated