JLo and behold, a new genre is born

Parbina Rashid

Is it a musical? A rom-com? A stylised biopic, or simply an elaborate music video for an upcoming album? All of it, and none of it. As writer-producer-actor of ‘This Is Me… Now’, Jennifer Lopez dares us to find beauty in the absurdity. Juxtaposing a mythical love tale in an ultra-futuristic setting and coating it with magic realism, she has created a new genre, and we are not complaining.

Let us begin at the beginning. Through an animation sequence, we are told about the Puerto Rican myth of Alida and Taroo, who turn into a rose and a hummingbird because of forbidden love. This is an important point as the flower and the hummingbird metaphor keeps appearing throughout the 65-minute duration of the film.

Then we see our protagonist, The Artist (yes, that’s how JLo plays herself), riding pillion on a motorcycle holding onto a man whose face is not revealed. But we can guess who he is. The bike crashes and next, we find her in a heart factory that runs on rose petals. She croons, ‘I made it through the rain, the trauma and the pain’ (Hearts and Flowers), breaks into an energetic choreography along with the factory workers, but still can’t save the heart!

Set between her painful breakup with Ben Affleck (he has a cameo too) just before the wedding in 2004 to their whirlwind reunion and becoming ‘Bennifer’ in 2021, it’s JLo’s complicated love life that is at the core of the story. She sings her ‘Rebound’ phase, tied to a man with a rope in a glass house. She manages to untie the rope and continue her search for love, making way for another number, ‘Can’t Get Enough’. It’s a fun take on JLo’s three failed marriages, one that keeps us guessing — who is the one at the altar with her: Ojani Noa, Cris Judd or Marc Anthony?

But who can grudge a woman who loves love? “When I was a little girl, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always, ‘In love,’” says The Artist. Love that lands her at a Love Addict Anonymous session!

Her tone may be flippant, the settings too polished, dance sequences too acrobatic, the dream sequences may often come in the way as she drifts in and out of the past and present, her vision for a rosy future may look a little clichéd, but the message is not lost on us — what is love and why do we need it?

The Artist meeting her younger self, who accuses her of not loving ‘her’ enough in her pursuit of loving others, is the most poignant scene in the film.

JLo’s wicked sense of humour comes into play as she cleverly injects the Zodiac Council into the narrative. While on earth it’s the Therapist (Fat Joe) who keeps her on track (at least tries to), up in the sky the Council members — Jane Fonda (Sagittarius), Trevor Noah (Libra), Kim Petras (Virgo), Keke Palmer (Scorpio), Sofia Vergara (Cancer), Jenifer Lewis (Gemini), Jay Shetty (Aries), Neil deGrasse Tyson (Taurus), Sadhguru (Pisces) and Post Malone (Leo) — watch over her. They are concerned, worried and even sympathetic. “She is running out of zodiac signs to fall in love with,” says the horrified lot.

Leo is all heart, “It makes me super sad. I just wanna give her a big hug” (after a failed relationship). The council members are delightfully bizarre. But bizarre theatrics is not an issue with this film. In fact, it only shows how JLo is capable of exerting creative control and whip up a visual spectacle with an emotional connect. It establishes her as a screenwriter and story creator with a lateral bent of mind.

She does not tread the line of her peers, Beyonce and Taylor Swift, and turns herself into an unattainable singing diva in some concert film. She presents herself as a person with vulnerabilities and flaws. This is her… raw and real!