Since
the beginning of art itself, which is to say since the beginning of humanity,
artists have been copying, stealing, and imitating one another. And while
director Vern Oakley’s film A Modern Affair is a little more complex than primitive drawings on cave walls, it
has certainly had its fair share of writers and filmmakers that may have drawn
inspiration from its core thematic elements.
In
A Modern Affair, Grace (Lisa
Eichhorn) decides she doesn’t want to waste another minute waiting for Mr.
Right to come along and goes to a sperm bank, where she carefully selects her
baby’s father from hundreds of samples. But once she finds out that she is
pregnant, she can’t shake the feeling that her donor Peter (played by Stanley
Tucci) might just be the love of her life. Going against all convention, she
seeks him out and the pair embarks on a touching romance, until Grace reveals
the truth about her baby.
While
it may seem at first blush to be a film about sperm donation, the truth is that
A Modern Affair is a classic love
story that explores not only romance but also intimacy, trust, and what it
really means to be a family. It is these same themes that keep showing
themselves in films time and again, beginning with The Back-up Plan and Switch, both of
which affix themselves to these complex issues with the adhesive story of
in-vitro fertilization.
For
an international twist on this idea, we’ve recently learned about the
French-Canadian feature Starbuck in limited release in New York and Los Angeles. In
this film, a serial sperm donor named David (Patrick Huard) finds out over the
course of a couple of weeks that his girlfriend is pregnant and that he has
fathered 533 children via sperm donation. As if that wasn’t shocking enough,
some of his children are petitioning to have his name released and it’s
creating a media frenzy.
In
A Modern Affair Grace has to decide
how she will raise her child – with or without Peter’s support – while in Starbuck David has to figure out how he
can be a father both to his girlfriend’s baby and to the 533 others he has
helped to create. While we don’t want to give away the story of either film, it
is clear that both tackle themes about the essence of being an adult, a
partner, and even a human being. A Modern
Affair takes these issues and weaves a charming, and at times quite
dramatic, film and Starbuck takes a
much more raucously comedic approach.
With
the popularity of Starbuck (there
have even been talks of remaking the film in
the U.S. with Vince Vaughn in the leading role) as well as other recent films,
it’s clear that the public’s fascination with non-traditional pregnancies and
sperm donors, and how those choices can have a ripple effect on friendships,
families, and communities. We think that makes it a perfect time to revisit A Modern Affair and its contemporary
take on timeless themes like love, commitment, and parenthood. A Modern Affair is currently streaming
on Hulu and Amazon Prime.
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