Millennium
In Josh Boone’s Stuck in Love, award-winning novelist Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) still has profound feelings for Erica (Jennifer Connelly), his ex-wife, even setting a place for her, in absence, at the dinner table. Clearly Bill is living in the past. But as the movie develops, his folly can be more accurately described as a deep, Saturnine commitment to his long dissolved marriage, with a dash of Neptunian pie-in-the-sky fantasies that one day she’ll return.
Erica left the marriage years earlier for a fitness mogul and, since then, Bill hasn’t written anything worthy of his reputation. His life seems to consist of spying on Erica, having sexual trysts with a married, heart-of-gold neighbor (Kristen Bell) when she can fit him into her busy schedule, and almost too rigorously fostering his children’s writing chops. His sexually voracious daughter, Samantha (Lily Collins), who has a distaste for relationship longevity, has already secured a book deal. His son Rusty, still in high school, is trying to find his own literary niche and gravitates towards a classmate (Liana Liberato) with serious issues of her own.
Although Bill’s children’s adventures are a focal point of the narrative, what drives Stuck in Love is whether Erica will find her way back to the man who continues to yearn for her. Towards the end, the movie reveals the reason behind Bill’s persistence, which turns out to be a Saturn-inspired, eye-for-an-eye rationale that redeems and validates his as-long-as-it-takes strategy.
Astrology Film Rating: ♄ (Saturn)
