JA from MNPP here, chiming in with what I consider to be what that there title proclaims: the most romantic exchange of the Aughts. It came at us in 2002, the year Nat's literally just finished giving some love to and has moved on from. But Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love refuses to be pigeon-holed with such small simple concepts as time! All is fluid in the land of Barry Egan's erratic brain. Anyway, that exchange:
Barry: I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
Barry: OK. This is funny. This is nice.
If Eternal Sunshine hadn't come along two years later, PTA's light-dappled ode to two crazy people finding solace in each other's crazy would've gotten my vote for the most romantic movie of the Aughts, period. As is it has to take solace in being only the second most lovely thing I saw in the whole decade. But nothing Clementine and Joel spat at each other came as close to making my heart burst into little interstitial title-cards of undulating color and star-fields like this bonding moment between sweethearts Barry Egan and Lena Leonard. I like to think their whispering sweet horrible violences at each other today, in some hotel in Hawaii, where it really looks like Hawaii there.
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