In July 2021, to celebrate the rekindling of their romance, a freshly smitten Ben Affleck sent Jennifer Lopez a large scrapbook, inside which he had crammed every note, love letter and private email (printed out) sent between the pair over 20 years. On the cover he wrote, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told. By Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. 2002-2021 … and counting.”
How do we know this? Because Lopez showed the book to friends, colleagues and collaborators and used it as the inspiration for her recent studio album This Is Me … Now plus its accompanying “narrative musical film” This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.
“Things that are private, I always felt, are sacred and special in part because they’re private,” Affleck says, halfway through this new and indecently compelling documentary. “So this was an adjustment for me.” This is ostensibly a “making of” This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, but inevitably becomes a backstage gawp at Affleck and Lopez (aka Bennifer) and a film that bristles with the occasionally unbearable tension that exists between her demands as an exhibitionist and his needs as an introvert. “We’re just two people learning how to compromise,” Affleck says, in one of many moments where he addresses the camera in a mood that seems to approximate both overwhelming happiness and extreme discomfort. In another, he admits that asking Lopez to cease from incessant social media activity and self-publicity would be akin to marrying a sea captain and then telling them that you don’t like the water. Accepting that reality, it seems, is the adjustment.
• This Is Me … Now: A Love Story review — the essence of a vanity project
The surrounding narrative frames the surreally overblown This Is Me … Now: A Love Story as Lopez’s own extravagant romantic gesture. “I’ve decided to share with the world the truth about my personal life,” she says, initially confident that backers will be found for a 65-minute sequence of randomly interconnected pop videos about serial monogamy, hummingbirds and finding your soul mate. “I just want people to believe that love exists!” Lopez later weeps with despair, as technical glitches abound, the funding disappears, and she’s pictured huddled next to Affleck, wondering aloud if the project “sucks”. At which point Affleck, who won an Oscar for his Iranian thriller Argo, begins to offer technical advice but is cut short by Lopez, who teases that now she’s getting tips from “the great award-winning director”.
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Other highlights include Lopez’s buddy Jane Fonda astutely observing, “It feels like you’re trying to prove something rather than living it!” Or there’s Lopez weeping (again!) over her social media feed while Affleck attends the premiere of his movie, Air, alone. It’s not quite warts and all: Lopez is far too canny a myth-maker for that. But it’s nonetheless a revealing reminder of the kinks and cracks that made the Bennifer saga so engrossing in the first place.
★★★★☆
86min
Streaming on Prime Video from Feb 27
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