"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r answered, and each wish resigned."
The poem is based on the letters of Peter Abelard and Heloise from the 12th century. Heloise had a very hard time forgetting her passion for Abelard and accepting, following Abelard's mutilation and taking monastic vows, that it was over forever. She took the veil according to his request but she did it out of love for him not because she felt any calling to serve God.
It is perhaps taken as the title for this movie as it is about two lovers who have had their memories erased to forget about each other but find, after their memories were wiped out, that they met again and fell in love. Their love was fated to be and no amount of wishing it were otherwise could make it so.
The story of Abelard and Heloise was also snuck into the movie Being John Malkovich. You would have to know it is them to even notice their presence in the film and in the lewd puppet show. And if you blink, you would miss the sign that announces that the marionette show is about their love story. The puppets read the letters out loud and make gestures that eventually become offensive and cause someone to punch the puppeteers lights out.
This clip has the sequence from 1:52 minutes to 3:27.
It appears that there has only been one film made of their story and that is Stealing Heaven. Unfortunately it was only released on vhs format and so cannot be purchased except in used copies and certainly cannot be found at Blockbuster. They might have had trouble with the content anyway since it is a European film and shows explicit love scenes between the two. Well, after all, it was a hot love story and, to read Heloise's words about it in her letters, the sex was really hot. I know it might be hard to imagine in the 12th century that people were having hot sex but this was in Paris after all.
Some kind person has posted some clips from their video of the film so you can see a few minutes of it. This clip is of their first kiss. I like the fact that the film makers made Heloise a grown woman rather than a 16 year old girl because I think she was older than that.
