Love Jones, Almost Restored My Faith

Graphic by Zara Afthab

I watched ​Love Jones​ for the first time in the week following my abortion. I had just turned twenty-seven and ended an on/off-again relationship with my daughter’s father. I wanted to see an adult version of love (for clarification on its existence) and pictures of Larenz Tate and Nina Long were starting to circulate on my Instagram feed. The film opened with Dionne Farris’s “Hopeless” playing as black and white film flowed across the screen depicting the Chicago sunrise and shots of black men, women and children smiling under the gaze of a camera. I instantly felt connected to these images from spending childhood summers in Chicago. A feel-good romantic film was just what I needed after my abortion. I felt like I just wasn’t any good at relationships. 

The reason why ​Love Jones, twenty-something years later, is making a comeback is simple; Nina and Darius’s relationship was a situationship. It’s the kind of love story that makes sense to millennials navigating dating apps and hook-up culture. Darius acting like Nina going back to New York to wrap up loose ends isn't a big deal because they're just “kicking it” is straight out of 2020 dating. The only thing that's changed is the terminology. It’s no new thing that love and sex have somehow become both synonymous and opposites of each other. As someone who usually jumps sex-first into relationships, it was comforting and relatable to me that Nina and Darius slept with each other on their first date and still have unquestionable chemistry keeping them interested in each other. Sometimes sex is a desire that goes hand in hand with love and sometimes it isn’t. Love doesn’t necessarily have to interchange with sex. Physical and emotional desires can coexist even when the emotions present are not as strong as love. But to me, craving the warmth of a body is the self-expressing a need or longing for love.

Nina and Darius really fuck with each other in Love Jones, but for whatever reason, neither of them wants to admit it. Their body and minds have similar desires but doubts pull them apart. It is this emotional wounding that prematurely ends their relationship. They have their first argument about trust after Nina briefly dates Darius’s friend, Wood, and Darius has a brief fling with a woman named Lisa. When trust, a value that is vital to love, is questioned, the relationship between Nina and Darius ends. “Why would you want to be with someone you don’t trust?” Truth is, this happens in relationships all the time. However, Darius and Nina’s issue wasn't so much about trust, as it was about communication. If they had had an honest conversation about the people they had engaged with or about what they wanted out of their relationship, Nina might not have agonised over the 5 a.m. phone calls from Lisa or the phone number tacked to Darius’s blackboard. Darius and Nina skipping conversations about their past actions and their feelings for each other, led them to make assumptions about the other. Once Nina and Darius began to test the true bounds of their feelings things get muddled between them. 

Throughout the movie, the definition of love is cast into question. In many ways, we don't know how to define love. The first romantic relationship we are introduced to is our parents'relationship. However, this is a relationship we see through a filtered lens. Our parental figures aren't seen (especially when you’re younger) as being people with their own feelings, goals, likes and dislikes. Because our parents are our caregivers (in some cases, not all) we rely on them to take care of us when we cannot, our relationship with them is based on need and survival. This connection to our parents paints them as godlike figures and to some extent we inadvertently dehumanized them. Looking back on my own parents’ relationship I used to believe they never had disagreements. My parents mystified love because they were so private in their own loving, and because of this romantic and intimate relationships were something I largely had to figure out on my own. Many parents have this attitude towards love, and this means that our concept of romantic relationships is largely moulded by movies, music and our peers. From an early age, we see Disney princesses being saved by love, warping our understanding. Suddenly we believe that everything will miraculously make sense in life when you find “the one.”

I’m guilty of looking at love through rose-tinted glasses. Nina and Darius’s relationship is romantic. They dance at clubs and they go to poetry readings. They listen to jazz together. But just like many people in real life, their relationship is missing a foundation of friendship, or common ground for them to feel comfortable and emotionally vulnerable with each other. At the end of the film,​Darius, who has largely been the pursuer in the relationship, becomes the pursued as Nina gets on stage to read a poem dedicated to him. The relationship comes full circle. Nina is able to let down her defences and be vulnerable and open to love as Darius listens willingly. 

Like the clarity after a breakup or the life shift an abortion brings along in the middle of summer, I’m not sure I had a complete change of heart after watching Love Jones. I’m still figuring out what I believe when it comes to relationships, and my faith in love hasn't completely been restored. But there is a possibility. Always a possibility.

Written by Samantha Williams (she/her)

IG: @samanthaliana_

Edited by Paola Duran (IG: wintrytokyo)

Graphic by Zara Afthab (IG: zara.aftab)