Oh, what good is it to live, // with nothing left to give? // Forget but not forgive? // Not loving all you see?

I was plugged into this here machine sizzling my retinas/minding my own, when my Sis comes in and places my 'Roman Holiday' into the wrong place on the shelf and simply says "It was really sad." I sort of just sat there. My "intro-to-Audrey-love-is-real-shining-light-macaroni & cheese/popcorn-Saturday-night-up-at-the-apartment-alone-yet-alive" film sitting besides my beloved Amélie in my pantheon of most wonderful Love stories ever dreamt to the silver screen.

(Spoilers a-hoy!, & btw, Turner Classic Movie channel has decided to make July Audrey Hepburn month, with late this Wednesday (7/6) being 'Roman Holiday' night, if you haven't seen it or it has been far too long, you should throw in the popcorn and grab yer fella or lady!)
I remember picking up the cassette from Family Video that night. I remember seeing those scenes for the first time: the mischievous smile as she pulled her blanket over her face in the royal bedroom, her sleeping-pill induced honesty (steps into Joe Bradley's apartment and decreeing "Is this the closet?") giving away her sheltered upbringing, the haircut (the birth of 'the style'), the ice cream, the scooter chase, the dance in the moonlight, the words in the car....... I mean it just stops being film when she appears on screen. It's like if you ever watch a film and you get to the halfway point and (if you are like me) you can't help but to think/plea for just a few seconds the "... please don't let this fall apart..." thought/prayer.

And it doesn't. It comes to that thin line where fairy tale and reality meet and never strays from it. She shines so bright, you just feel the energy like a glorious song, like I almost want to get up and dance or something like there's music floating around. And the ending! Just to see how everything keeps them apart and her final words to him and him walking through the corridor alone, and you think for a moment that it's such sadness, but then you feel just how much better it is to love and have lost than to never have loved, and how you know that if you would ask either of them the question: "If you knew before this day that you would meet each other and all these wonderful things would happen, but then you would never see each other again, would you do the same?", they would not change a thing 14 out of 10 times.

That question: if there was one single magical day where you met that person, that true Love, and you spent the whole day just alive for each other, would you choose to skip over the day totally and not have the person in your heart only as memory? Or would you build a shrine in your heart for him or her; a garden of delight that never sees winter, where you tasted the sweetness of Love and the memory of this person and that time together shared never fades into darkness?


Another reporter: Which of the cities visited did Your Highness enjoy the most?
Princess Ann: Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to........ Rome. By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.