The woman who misunderstood him best

In the film version of Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", Lena Olin's Sabina is described as "the woman who understood him best". For those unfamiliar with the work, the "him" in question refers to Tomas-- the typical self-obsessed Kundera male protagonist, driven by sexual desires and petty idol theft. If Sabina is the one who understands him, perhaps the favor is returned as the sit, post-sex, naked in front of a mirror, which tempts them to begin again. Sabina and Tomas are in love with their self-images, which must be sustained at all costs, for it is the shallow-root of these mirror-tricks that holds their worldview together.

Kundera is often credited by aspiring young American cooler-than-thou's with bringing sexual freedom to post-communist literature, and with creating characters which epitomize the vapid transcendence of the US hipster crowd. After all, why mourn our failures in life and love when the whole humiliation can be avoided by chalking it up to the drama of our "personal detachment"? Tomas would probably agree with Henry Kissinger that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac", especially power parading as insensibility or impermeability. Unfortunately, the impermeable is not quite as fascinating as the subtly-permeable, or the sagaciously permeable. Who gives a flying foutre about characters that are too tough or cool or self-knowing for the trivial evens of this world? Call me a realist, but I like my characters as I like my men-- real, fallible, sentient, and yes, sensible beings who couldn't care less about being cool and couldn't care more about being for real.