“This is not a love story, this is a story about love” – even the tagline for this film is brilliant!

(500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy which chronicles the story of Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the 500 days that it takes him to meet Summer (Zooey Deschanel), have a relationship with her and then deal with the heartbreak that she causes him.

There are plenty of reasons why I love this film and it is definitely one of my favourites of all time. Firstly, the basic premise of the film is great. It takes the usual rom-com formula of boy meets girl, girl falls in love, boy doesn’t want her and then the girl wins the boy over and flips it completely on its head: boy meets girl, boy falls in love, and girl breaks his heart. It’s not a happy story for the majority but it works.

The artistic direction of the film is second to none and credit has to go to Marc Webb for that.. Watching (500) Days of Summer, the colour of blue comes through a lot and this is done in order to make Zooey Deschanel’s eyes stand out which they do and make her come across as even more beautiful than she is, which is important for the story. The film, visually is very pleasing and easy on the eyes.

The soundtrack for (500) Days of Summer is undeniably great. It features songs from classic English band The Smiths, established rock band Black Lips, Regina Spektor and relatively new indie bands Mumm-Ra and Temper Trap.  It’s a soundtrack that combines a lot of genres of music and they really help to tell the story.

(500) Days of Summer is a piece of incredible writing. It follows a non-linear structure and this adds to the humour as well as the story. The dialogue is real and the comedy is really well written, with physical and verbal comedy being used and the non-linear story structure sometimes makes things seem funnier than they would otherwise.

The cast and characters. These two factors come as one because with a different cast the real character of Tom and Summer may not have come through as well as it does here. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favourite actors and everything he does is gold in my eyes. Here though, he puts in a top notch performance and breathes life into Tom Hansen. I’m not sure whether this is a compliment to him or not but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is someone you can buy as falling in love easily and having his heart broken (although this might come from first seeing him in 10 Things I Hate About You). Tom is incredibly well written and I think that a lot of people can empathise with his position; you fall in love with someone, think everything is going well and then have your heart broken by that person who you would have given everything for. I think this again comes from the writing as Scott Neustadter, co-writer of the film, based the story on one of his own love experiences.

Summer, I guess, is the villain of the piece. She is this fun loving girl who our hero, Tom, falls in love with and then stamps on his heart. She makes me angry all the time and I hate her more and more with each watch. Zooey Deschanel brings a certain innocence to the role and plays her superbly in a way that almost make her motives and feelings seem true. I guess, if you try really hard (which I don’t want to do) you can see Summer’s side of the story; she told Tom up front she didn’t want to get serious and he agreed with that, technically she did nothing wrong. But I still hate her.

The ending. Both characters have a happy ending, just not together, which is really nice. The film obviously places bigger importance on Tom’s happy ending but it is good to see that Summer was happy too. Maybe later on she got divorced and realised she never should have dumped Tom but who knows. Luckily, Tom meets another woman and we can assume that he makes it work with her. I know the ending splits a lot of people but I thought that naming the new girl Autumn was a stroke of genius.

(500) Days of Summer is one of my favourite films of all time. It tells a real story of love, that nothing ever runs smoothly and that just because you lose one person that you loved you can still find happiness. I can watch it over and over again and not get bored. I recommend it as highly as recommendations can get. Seriously, watch it! And if you have already seen it, re-watch it!