How I Spent Thursday: The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

I have a friend whom I thought was in a perfect marriage. Years later, married to a second husband, the real love of her life, she disclosed why she worked to have the first relationship dissolved in spite of the children who adored their father. She simply got bored. After that, she went on a spiritual journey that led her to the Indian meditation master Gurumayi.

I remembered her as I watched Julia Roberts playing the writer Elizabeth Gilbert and transforming onscreen from that bored wife to a soul searcher to finally someone with enough self-love and inner balance who can again grab a chance at happiness in the movie still playing past its second -week run, Eat, Pray, Love.

My daughters and sisters saw it ahead of me, I again unwilling to be disappointed by the film translation of a favorite non-fiction book (I wasn't satisfied with Under the Tuscan Sun and felt Diane Lane wasn't a suitable Frances Mayes). But there was the prospect of seeing scenes of Rome, Naples, Mumbai and Bali, better than watching the National Geographic channel because this one's got a real-life plot.

As the movie took me from Italy to Asia, I lost the sound of the narrator's voice. My favorite parts, as my daughters rightly predicted, were the endless meals Liz takes to feed the hunger in her soul (the scene of her eating a plateful of spaghetti alone with an aria playing in the background--that was almost obscene, especially as the screen was covered with a shower of Parmesan cheese).

As Felipe, Liz's Brazilian lover in Bali where everyone has love affairs, Javier Bardem is more than substantial eye candy: he is, as Liz says, "a feminist husband" who stayed home and raised his children while his wife had her career; he is self-sufficient financially; he can cook; he can sail. So when Liz hesitated to accept his invitation to sail away to a deserted isle, I felt like reaching out to wring her neck.

There was a short scene that showed them in the local talipapa (flea market) where Felipe warned Liz against trying the durian because it "tastes like feet." This is such sacrilege to the real Felipe in my life. Not even 10 elephants can drag this durian-loving man to see Eat, Pray, Love if I tell him that detail. He will just dismiss this as a chick flick.

Bardem as Felipe and Roberts as Liz consummate their relationship in the movie Eat, Pray, Love.