the perfect pairing (2022) - halloween is ovah and it’s the season for movies about head injuries (romantic) again instead. in this one an overcritical by hallmark standards wine critic slips on some ice in her signifying business heels and gets AMNESIA for 3-5 working days. also she has no form of identification bc she left her purse on the train and loaded her luggage into the wrong van and then mistakenly got into a car belonging to a local vineyard employee instead, the very same vineyard now struggling to survive after one of her cruellest and most critical wine pans… all this stuff happens prior to the head injury which left me wondering if anyone could tell, but it makes more sense when you realise that writing mildly catty wine reviews in the hallmarkverse is a Sin that justifies any amount of meetcute-enforcing indignities. by the end of the film she’s almost in tears contemplating the heroism of those who put it all on the line to take a chance and bring to life a dream… truly a cry from the collective dtv spec writer heart!
the main guy looks like they ordered a lesser baldwin through some kind of catalog and his main thing is being obsessed with creating “ice wine”, a project initiated by his dead wife. so dedicated is he to the dream that this small winery has a whole room carved from ice inside it just so you can drink the ice wine in appropriate setting. between the ice stuff and the dead wife and the obsessive grudge holding over negative reviews he seems about one bad day from trying to hold gotham city to ransom, and that bad day comes when the true identity of the amnesiac lady is revealed, right after they had a bonding drive through the snow in his convertable. when he finds out he angrily storms off and gets back in the car, and then pushes the button that makes the hood slowly come out. dont talk to me or my precocious daughter who dresses like a member of kid creole and the coconuts ever again.
best exchange, when the main lady is breaking up with her phynance guy starter bf at the start:
- this is not the christina i know.
- it’s the christina i used to be… it just took getting amnesia to remember it.
- that’s pretty ironic.
ice wine stuff aside a surprising amount of time is spent on the main lady trying to cook random dishes from her cookery notebook in the hopes that some combination of food smells will make her memory come back, which makes me wonder if this movie was once pitched as a ds puzzle game