How are they going to get rid of Irene? That is the appalling question that arises oh so quickly. Divorce? Death by childbirth? An airstrike? A poisonous monkey? How will the complication get killed off?
It will, won't it?
Oh, we live in cynical times.
I guess romantic love is dependant upon situational obstacles, family complications, to give it savour. Like an unresolved harmony, dissonance in yearning for consonance. Of course, the lovers don't usually wish for trouble. They just want to get on with it. Do we want them to? Are we impatient? Or do we want to see them work a bit? Plenty of denial before the dinner.
Singapore, before the war. John Dexter, of the family Dexter, a name in Singapore don't ya know, falls in love with Julie Soong, of the Soongs no less. Business relations yes. Friendly relations yes. Connubial relations? Not on your nimbu! John is sent away to the London office, and Julie dragged away to San Francisco, and they'd better forget one another. Of course they can't. Separation only makes it worse. There's also the small matter of a world war in the offing, and there are other lovers or would-be lovers, jealousies, the pitter patter of tiny feet. Must true love be denied? Can it be?
It's a measure of Tanamera's quality that I still remember it, a little, thirty-five years after broadcast. It feels like it could teach us a lesson in romantic love, or just flirtation and courtship. The way John pursues Julie and Julie gently but firmly puts him off, that is without definitively putting him off her. She doesn't just give it up because she likes him too, and as a consequence (probably) he likes all the more for her resistance. The scene where he rushes to her as she's being driven away, bound for Singapore. My goodness! It has all the emotional exuberance that was missing, the other night, from the otherwise superb movie The English Patient. They needed a sandstorm to move things along in that one. Perhaps Irene will get washed away in a monsoon?
I'm definitely in it until the end, bitter or sweet, whatever it turns out to be. Worth noting, in case anyone's worried this will be too soppy, that it doesn't scrimp on life beyond the plantation. We have business deals, checking the rubber harvest, shipping negotiations, conflicts of interest both business and personal (and political). Plenty of everything. A little more nookie wouldn't have gone amiss, mind.
Compelling saga of love and conflict.
