Soulmates of crisis: Cinema frames conflict as the language of romance, but what does it mean to love in a pandemic?

The Viewfinder is a fortnightly column by writer and critic Rahul Desai, that looks at films through a personal lens. It’s the sort of scenario we would flippantly conceive as a fictional exam of our feelings: If a deadly virus eats through humankind tomorrow, would you come rescue me? We took turns visiting each other’s cities — and therefore loved with the urgency of two dreamers discovering one another through farewells. Earlier, I would notice a little quirk — like the way she absent-mindedly reads her articles aloud while writing them — and cherish the mental picture of her preserving a school habit well into adulthood. Somewhere beyond looking in a hurry and loving like there’s no tomorrow, there is a field of limbo — we keep meeting there.