In the past few days, I have shown my girlfriend four of my favourite films - Swingers (a new favourite), Good Will Hunting, Sideways and American Beauty.
I realised that what attracts me to these films so much isn't just the performances (and I think Robin Williams' performance in Good Will Hunting might be the finest acting performance I've ever seen) but the fact that the central character of each one is, in some way, a loser.
I can't even remember the name of Jon Favreau's character in Swingers, but he's a lonely, desperate loser who can't get over a relationship that ended six months earlier, and ends up constantly sabotaging himself.
Will Hunting is an orphan and abuse victim with intelligence beyond any that had been seen in living memory, but that he'd never been able to put to use - and it left him stalled in a life that in some ways, seems pathetic, but is so comforting to him that he feels like he can't escape it, or won't.
Miles in Sideways is a divorced, depressive, failed author who uses being a wine connoisseur as an excuse for being an alcoholic.
And Lester in American Beauty is stuck in a loveless, cold marriage with a woman he barely recognises any more, and ends up trapped in a sequence of fantasies about a girl young enough to be his daughter.
Each one of them, in his own way, a loser. And I always side with the loser. I always want to know their story. I see parts of myself in all of them (Jon Favreau in obsessing about the past, Will in his refusal to exit his comfort zone, Miles just GENERALLY, Lester in the way he uses his pathetic self esteem to make jokes like 'it's okay, I wouldn't remember me either'; a funny joke but one that's cruelly accurate to his own feelings).
These are the films that have shaped and are still shaping my life, from the attitudes of the characters, the lessons they learn. These films are pieces of art, they move me, and sharing them with someone has made them all the more special to me simply because she understands that and understands them and understands me.
I love this girl.