TOO MUCH: MELODRAMA on FILM
The Notebook + Intro by Young Electrics
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams star as passionate young lovers kept apart by 1940s class barriers, reuniting years later. A powerful story of unconditional love, sacrifice and devotion.
Director: nick cassavetes
Cast includes: Rachel McAdams, ryan gosling, james garner, gena rowlands
Co-curated, hosted AND INTRODUCED by the Young Electrics as part of Too Much: Melodrama on Film, a UK-wide celebration of exaggerated staging, score and performance to create the ultimate spectacle.
121 mins / 2004 / usa / english
Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling are Allie (a young heiress) and Noah (a lumber mill worker) in 1940s South Carolina. They meet at a fairground where Noah find love at first sight in the bright and beautiful Allie. He woos her enthusiastically and at the end of a long, eventful summer they are passionately in love. Unfortunately the class differences between them and societal expectations (not to mention Allie's scheming mother) force them apart, only for them to reunite years later and confront their enduring feelings.
The movie is all sunsets and period hairdos and smouldering staring contests. Gosling and McAdams, with Bogie and Bacall- like chemistry, created of the best romances in movie history, and there is no denying the film's powerful emotional impact and huge popularity with female audiences. Co-starring the legendary Gina Rowlands with James Garner as the older version of this star-crossed couple, with Nick Cassavetes directing (the son of actress Gena Rowlands and Greek-American actor and film director John Cassavetes). In casting his own mother he pays a perfect homage to the screen legend.
Melodrama tells intimate and familial stories, a rare cinematic form that concerns itself with women's inner lives repeatedly dismissed by critics that found the outpouring of emotion ""too much"" and yet these films and the legacy of 'womens' pictures' carry searing social commentary beneath a glossy veneer.
Imperfectly feminist yet endlessly relatable, come to the cinema to reconsider what, if anything, is ""too much"". 
Supported by BFI FAN and National Lottery funding and co-curated by Young Electrics.
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