ABSTRACT
Unaware, after receiving the Lacuna treatment, that he has been having a relationship with her for the past two years, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) meets Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) at Montauk. “Why,” he confides to his journal as he sees her looking at him in the coffee shop, “do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” One answer, the film suggests, lies, like so many of love’s answers, in childhood: “She’s not looking at me,” Joel’s childhood self says of his mother, as his adult self visualizes a childhood scene, “No one ever looks at me.” A little later, that same childhood self says, “I want her to pick me up.” Then the adult self, as if experiencing the desire all over again, comments, “It’s weird how strong that desire is.” Joel’s loving response to any woman’s attention, in other words, was formed early. He has fallen in love with Clementine before. But even when he fell in love with her the first time, during their initial meeting in Montauk, he was repeating himself, falling again in ways he had already fallen long ago. That’s one reason Clementine can so readily be assigned roles in his childhood memories, whether as his mother’s friend Mrs Hamlyn or as his own childhood sweetheart.
