Love Hard

_{A RomCom Netflix movie}

I am not fond of making a movie review, especially not in this case where subjecting emotions is involved in the movie. But I like to make an exception for Love Hard where often in the movie, I get caught myself contemplating to what extent I can do something for someone without compromising my stability or even being forced to do it.

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Exactly what this romcom movie subtly portrays. The Love Hard is a Netflix original romantic-comedy movie starred by Nina Dobrev who played Natalie - a bachelorette who's in pursuit of her dream man. So she decided to take her dating steps onto the next level by pursuing her online sweetheart Tag, played by Darren Barnet. Later that she knew she was catfished by Josh Lin, a childhood friend of Tag, played by Jimmy O. Yang. Josh is using Tag's hot and manly photos in this dating app, displaying what a woman would find attractive and interesting. In a very conclusive way of Natalie, her actions led her to a Christmas full of desperation. Desperate enough to make things aligned with their motives, Josh and Natalie both agreed to help each other in getting their way out and through.

I like to make this review more personal and approach it reactively. The movie pictures a timely situation of opposing sex dealing with their insecurities in a modern yet human way. From a woman's perspective, getting rid of her insecurities puts her in a spot where she hungers for others' validating remarks. In contrast, a man's way of eliminating his insecurities is by tampering it in ways he can fully take advantage of himself, a very sneaky and cowardly move. Among other defense mechanisms, these two are rampantly observed in society more often than not. And both have clear implications of how and what an individual would experience in the long term - having low self-esteem, vulnerability, being abusive, and manipulative.

Now back to the movie, Natalie has this coping style of engulfing her dating experiences through writing. She transcribes everything she experiences in dating in her column. Motivated enough to prove her boss wrong about her dating dilemma, Natalie takes this very risky decision to meet her online crush, Josh Lin in the image of hunky Tag. She went to Josh's place without telling him she would do it during the holiday season and not knowing whether this would end to be one of her write-ups in her column or not.

It was the epitome of failure for Natalie when she found out that Josh is not the Josh she anticipated. Felt betrayed and succumbed to disgrace, she went to a bar for a drink where she saw the real Josh she interacted online, it was Tag. She could not believe what she was seeing, that the online Josh she knew was real irl. This is where the opportunity came in for Josh and Natalie. Josh wanted to clear his actions of catfishing so he promised Natalie to help her get to Tag and to know him better. This is also fueled by his desire of making a proud gesture of his family trying to figure out something that his family would be proud of. Josh has this constant battle of proving worthiness in the family, especially against his older brother Owen Lin so she asked Natalie to be her fake girlfriend in exchange for giving her the moments she wanted with Tag. Things are getting more complicated, lie after lie.

Natalie saw a glimmer of hope for the man of her dream. But she, later on, put herself in a more troublesome position. Acting and doing the things she is not capable of doing just for some short time with Tag. She realized that she was not being true to herself and what was worse was what she saw from the real Tag which was different from the Tag online.

Josh, on the other hand, was trying too hard to prove himself to the family that he can have amazing things in his life just like what his brother had become. He also later realized that what kept him from growing was his perception that his family knew what was better for him and what was not. He's losing the game of his own that he had to hide the thing that he loved - making scented candles.

Finally, they needed a remedy for their repercussions. They finally unveiled the truth to everyone, to Lin's family in a supposed engagement party of Natalie and Josh. They told everyone the lies they were up to in desperation of getting personal satiety. And as they try to comprehend everything, Natalie and Josh were sorry.

Josh brought up his passion for making candles to his family - which eventually turned out to be something they're so proud of Josh. Natalie, on her quest of finding her man, realized that she just has to be true to herself just like what Josh did to himself and his family. She found herself in love with the Josh she knew about.

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In life, specifically dealing with the impulse of love, we sometimes take aggressive actions not considering the risks of losing part of our own, be it our peace of mind, our time, health, resources, etc. Some of us will take that as an investment we may further reap in the future while some will take it as a glorious sacrifice in the name of love. But neither of the two would compensate for the result of failing, not even the fulfillment in a form of sweet lemoning. At the end of the day, we want to love and be loved. That's just being human.

If you are reading this part of the review, I would like to leave you some questions you may find provoking to answer:

1. What sacrifices will make in the face of desperation?
2. In your situation right now, are your sacrifices worth the things you have acquired?

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