Putting a label on love has never been uncomplicated.  The romantic image of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo Monteque and Juliet Capulet, is perhaps the most recognizable conundrum.  It competes at the polar opposite with Archie and Edith Bunker whose volatile but unquestionable love for one another makes for an equally hard act to follow (apologies to Shakespeare). Then there are those memorable scenes from Room with a View which bring to the fore the uncertain potency of what is most readily visible. Meanwhile the social challenges of love are pointedly addressed in Meet the Fockers. Like the other expositions it unites the enigma with families on both sides of the amorous entanglement.

A Room with a View is a 1985 British romance film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It is written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who adapted E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View. Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England, and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson.

For those of us romantically inclined it is quite impossible to escape the allure of youth and natural beauty, hallmarks which have distinguished artists as laudable as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Yet the well known (though perhaps infrequently acknowledged) corollary of endearment of any description is that given time the draw of Nature’s springtime blossom will one day fade. This is not meant to dilute the urgency of young love; rather it is but a nudge to cultivate features of amicability which surpass the flesh. Meanwhile the on-lookers to the artistic work in progress continue relentlessly to attach adoration to veneer and vitality, the seminal indicia of evolution.

For every union of souls there abounds a unique chronicle. Any attempt to qualify or limit the synchrony by age, looks, social standing, wealth, health or otherwise is futile. The brilliance of romance is its ineffable elasticity and its incomparability. I for one am reluctant to attempt the marvellous.