Thursday, August 26, 2010

folie a deux

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'I run away from reality. I always did...' he said to me.
I ran away from him last summer. I traded one illusion for another. Just a different sort of fairytale. When the magic faded I ran away again... Wanting to finally figure things out and 'get real'.
Why do we feel more alive when we're chasing a dream?

'Maybe it is crazy. But if we're in it together and we're happy, what else do we need?' he said to me.
I surrendered and we went to get ice-cream. The best ice-cream place in town. The menu was so long it could have given you a good read for days. So we smiled and just asked the waitress to recommend us something. She observed for two seconds our love-soaked gazes and she showed us page 36 in the menu, a feast of tropical flavours, an exquisitely baroque icy dessert called 'Folie a deux' !



Folie à deux
(English pronunciation: /fɒˈli ə ˈduː/, from the French for "a madness shared by two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another, two people "morbidly predisposed" to delusional psychosis mutually trigger symptoms in each other.

But maybe falling in love is in a way a delusion shared by two.
Just like many other illusions we need to keep us going. We all like to escape reality, even for a little time, in books or films or peculiar hobbies. For some is just for fun, for others it's a necessity. I suppose the key is to balance fantasy and reality in a way that none overtakes the other.

Heavenly creatures is a film set in the 50's about two girls with an intense fantasy life, following a true story.





The film is very good at building the characters and truly makes you understand their justification for their acts. It is about escaping reality in a fantasy world in which they start believing so much that they would do anything to protect it.


pics source

6 comments:

  1. long time that i saw the movie and i love it, i cant remember everything now, but i hope to watch it soon.

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  2. Is that Kate Winslet in it? Hm, should probably rent it then, I love pretty much all her work :)

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  3. I'm not sure I'd call falling in love an illusion/delusion/dream. In any case, I feel as if it's a realer reality than what we face, sometimes.

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  4. yes...that is Kate Winslet! She's great!

    And I agree with you abby...when we fall in love everything else seems to fade in intensity...

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  5. I love Heavenly Creatures but I haven't seen it in years. I love your idea that falling in love is a shared delusion.

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