On-Screen Romance—Minnesota Style

It’s nearly  the fourteenth of February and Eternal Love approacheth on gossamer wings gilded by advertising dollars.

To help you and your beloved celebrate, and to ensure that you need not  actually make conversation, Patch has prepared a short list of movie  recommendations starring actors and actresses born in the land by the  shores of Gitche Gumee.

"The  Virgin Suicides"

Background: In 1999, then-21-year-old St. Paulite Josh Hartnett’s surname was not yet synonymous with heartthrob. The actor was fresh off his much-lauded role in The Faculty when he was cast in The Virgin Suicides, Sofia  Coppola’s adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides novel. The plot centers  around the five Lisbon sisters, ethereal blondes stifled by their  parents’ conservative approach to child rearing, and the high school boys who idolize them.

Why  watch it: Yes, it ends in a quintuple suicide, but the film’s tone is tender and often comic, and the violent undertones make  for palatable explorations of adolescent anguish and the sublimated passions of the suburbs, which might otherwise come off as schmaltzy and hackneyed.

Minnesota sex  appeal: Hartnett gives an understated performance as  Trip Fontaine, a high school student who, despite having “emerged from  baby fat to the delight of girls and women alike,” delivers his lines  with a proto-Mumblecore, stuttering shyness.

"Edward  Scissorhands"

Background: As a lonely teenager, Tim Burton drew a  scissor-handed figure; that figure would later be the inspiration for  his movie, Edward Scissorhands. Burton cast Olmstead County native Winona Ryder as Edward’s love interest, Kim Boggs.

Why  watch it: While the credits roll, compare theories on  what exactly the scissors symbolize, on whether our need to forge  meaningful connections with other people can ever overcome the  accidental damages we inflict. Also, on how Johnny Depp manages to be so hot despite disfiguring makeup.

Minnesota  sex appeal: Ryder, her 19-year-old face framed by dyed-blonde, fairy-tale-princess frizz, simpers across the screen, capturing your heart.

"Swingers"

Background: While in his early twenties, Minneapolis-born Vince Vaughn befriended director Jon Favreau, who later cast him in the cult hit Swingers. In the movie, Vaughn plays a garrulous, charismatic  charmer who applies every available method of sybaritic distraction to push his friend beyond a post-breakup funk.

Why watch it: While irrefutably misogynistic—the film’s glamorization of pick up artistry probably led to the cultural  proliferation of distasteful Millennial figures such as Tucker Max and Mystery—this film’s brand of misogyny is so striving, pathetic and guileless (not to mention  art-house intentional) that the humor ricochets and comes at the expense of the harsher sex.

Minnesota  ex appeal: Filmed before time’s winged chariot hurried  Vaughn off to a bloated, wrinkled middle age, the Vaughn of Swingers is  gleefully loutish, casually irresistible and as hip to his allure as was Charlie Sheen in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Jack Nicholson in anything.