When art imitates life...

I admit it had more to do with my infatuation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt rather than the actual substance and heart of the movie, but I've been DYING to see his film Don Jon. So today I finally got to watch and my God it was amazing!

So it's about a guy named Jon, a Catholic womanizing porn addict who only cares about his apartment, his car, his body, his family, church, girls, and porn (mainly). He reminded me so much of someone...not the whole porn addict thing but the way he treated the women in his life. Most all of them were disrespected, discarded, meaningless fucks until he met Barbara and Esther. And where the story goes with them is that he starts dating Barbara but this only happens because he was so desperate to fuck her in the beginning; he realized as he was attempting to get in her pants that he liked her more than the average girl he usually takes home and that he's in love with her...although still not enough to give up porn. While he's dating her, he meets another woman named Esther (I identified with her and related to her relationship with Jon so deeply it was scary) who's kinda weird and quirky and suffers from depression due to certain circumstances. They unwittingly become friends.

While Jon is dating Barbara who is seemingly perfect in every way for him, he's also spending a little time getting to know Esther and in the end Barbara finds out about his addiction to pornography and dumps him. This leads to Esther and him hooking up and they eventually end up together because she shows him that the connection between two people is more powerful and real than porn could ever be. The movie was amazing at demonstrating how much they loved each other without putting a label on their relationship. It was also great how neither ever expected or wanted anything from the other, they just loved. Even though Barbara would always criticize Jon, try to change little things about him, and only accepted half of who he was without loving and embracing the darkest parts, he had Esther who he could talk about anything with, got high with, laughed with, fucked and still remained friends with...it was a nice change of pace. I love an unconventional love story.