Remake This: A Little Romance

Imagination is a treasure. Forget about Lego, in your mind you can create and innovate thousands of idea. I am no filmmaker, but I am a dreamer. Here I take a movie and put it in another era, try to imagine how it would be like.

I've been thinking a lot about A Little Romance lately. Earlier this year in February, there was a weekend that saw three new releases in United States were remakes from the 80s: Robocop, About Last Night and Endless Love. It prompted quite a number of articles debating whether these remakes have defended the legacy of the original or have they destroyed what's good memory one has left of the original. I have only watched Robocop out of the three, so I can only say that this new version is not too bad itself, though my level of expectation is low too.

But I am here to talk about A Little Romance and the prospect of a remake. What has it got to do with whatever I've written above? Not much actually. A Little Romance was not even released in the 80s, it was 1979. But because I wasn't even born yet when it first came out, and I only watched it for the first time last year (yes, last year, I am very late on some movies, are you surprised?) I kinda have it mixed up with other 80s movies. When I first watched it I thought (and I still think) what a fresh and cute movie it is, with the tale of a sweet puppy love front and center in a background as beautiful as a picture (that's Paris for you).

The film follows a French boy (15-year-old Thelonious Bernard) and an American girl (14-year-old Diane Lane) who meet in Paris and begin a romance that leads to a journey to Venice with the help of a kind elderly gentleman (Oscars winner Laurence Olivier) where they hope to seal their love forever with a kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs at sunset. I often feel the movie works largely due to the innocence of both the boy and the girl. They want nothing more than just to seal their love with a kiss, an innocent ambition that I don't think many kids nowadays will share. The parents have no idea where their kids are because they have none of the whatever tracking apps that come built-in together with your smart phones. Technologies really have its downside sometimes, if you know what I mean.

Truth be told: I have never watched Endless Love the original version. Yes, that classic starring a teenage Brooke Shields with an even more classic theme song by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross. I would have done a "Seeing Double" feature if I've seen both, seeing that they both feature a puppy love at the center of the stories. Endless Love has been remade (albeit a bad one, according to so many critics and fans alike), so is a A Little Romance remake possible? Or do we even need it? How can we update it with modern elements like smart phones and laptops (surely this is inescapable?) without ruining the whole fresh and cute aura of the movie? Most importantly, the original is known to launch the career of a then 14-year-old Diane Lane. Who can step in the shoes in her place?

At the center of the story is the trio: the boy (Daniel), the girl (Lauren), and the elderly gentleman (Julius). For the role of Lauren, we need a teenage girl who is both beautiful and elegant. She is the step-daughter of a rich businessman so she has the quality of a well-behaved lady, but she's also secretly rebellious. Not many teen actresses possess such quality and fit the age range. I'm thinking of Elle Fanning. She's 16 this year, slightly older than the character in the original version (she's supposed to be 13), but it should not be a problem raising the age of the character for Elle to play her. Remember her performance in the 2011 sci-fi Super 8? She was 13 then, and that is the kind of performance we are looking at, and she can play Lauren the same way she played Alice.

The role of Daniel presents me with a challenge. In the movie, he is a French boy who barely speaks English (he learns most of his English through old Hollywood movies). I don't watch a lot of French movies, and it is hard for me to even name 10 famous French actors/actresses, let alone teenage ones. I did research on Wikipedia but the outcome was not encouraging. I am not familiar with their works so it's hard to judge whether or not they are suitable for the role. In such situation, I can think of two solutions: either to make the character a teenage boy from England or United States so we can cast an English-speaking actor, or to make the English-speaking actor do a French accent. In either case we will cast an English-speaking actor that we are familiar with (or at least I am, since I am the one doing the casting now). We raise Lauren's age so it's only appropriate to raise Daniel's as well. We don't want an odd couple who look more siblings than lovers, do we? After scrolling through the name list of actors born in the same year as Elle Fanning, I decided on Nolan Gould, a.k.a. Luke Dunphy from TV sitcom Modern Family. Daniel is dreamy and sometimes silly, as is Luke Dunphy. Plus, he has curly hairs, just like Thelonious Bernard who played the original Daniel.

Last but not least, the role of Julius a.k.a. the kindhearted old gentleman who helps the little couple was originally played by Sir Laurence Olivier. He is a charming but mysterious gentleman, and Laurence Olivier makes him a lovable stubborn old man. This one is relatively easier to pick. The name Ben Kingsley immediately came to mind. He played a French before (in Hugo), and he is so versatile he can play any kind of characters in his sleep. Dealing with two teenagers is a deja-vu for him, it's Hugo all over again.

As mentioned above, it's impossible not to have an updated version without adding in modern elements (unless we retain the story in the same setting of 70s, but I prefer a remake all the way, not just new cast but new elements as well) and I fear all these updates will ruin the movie. Lauren would have been using her own laptop instead of going to her stepfather's factory thus meeting his employee that came up with the algorithm to predict the horse race winners. Heck, she can even find websites that do this for her easily, it takes about 5 minutes to get the results. It will be a very different movie than the original one, and it might end up panned by critics much like the remake of Endless Love. But if you ask me do I still hope for a remake, my answer is still a "yes". The reason is simple: we need more puppy love stories, and no others can compete with what Daniel and Lauren has.