Jennifer Lopez confesses. She wants the world to know that she is a hopeless romantic, that her divorces and love failures were part of the learning that led her back to the arms of Ben Affleck . The singer sends her message loud and clear in This is me… now , the 65-minute musical film available on Prime Video that accompanies the release of her ninth studio album. A production that, although at first glance we take with a grain of salt due to the egocentric waste that the artist presents, ends up surprising as a ridiculously brilliant creative source .
The actress and singer plays a version of herself. A woman who dreams of finding the love of her life. And so, in This is me… now , she represents her three previous marriages as failed, toxic or wrong relationships that simply helped her recognize that what is paramount in the search for a soul mate is her self-love. Make peace with the past and love yourself above all things. Because this way true love can come. In her case, the second chance with Ben Affleck .
This is me… now is a collage of video clips that promote some of the songs from the new album and a creative vehicle for JLo's artistic brilliance but, above all, it is a song to love . To romance as a couple, the search for soul mates and the value of self-love with Ben Affleck as the main source of inspiration through the intimate letters that she wrote to the singer . However, this is not an explicit detail. They do not explain it at any point in the footage but rather Jennifer Lopez told it in the promotional campaign. But it is a relevant detail because it defines the whole idea.
Ben and JLo's intimacy revealed
Jennifer Lopez dances, sings, acts and finances the production, having invested $20 million of her own pocket.
And when some didn't give a cent for the idea. “Everyone thought she had driven me crazy,” the singer confessed to Variety about the project. “And by the way, I thought she was too.” Even her friend and co-star in If You Get Married... I Kill You , Jane Fonda , who appears in the film as a member of the Zodiac Council of Love along with other figures, feared that the world would misinterpret her intentions . Especially after seeing the media noise caused by the images of Ben Affleck looking apparently bored and unhappy at the Grammy Awards in March 2023. But JLo assured him that nothing was happening. That Ben had simply become “the symbol of the beleaguered man.”But that image rolled and grew, turning the exercise of analyzing the actor's faces into a popular media sport. However, with This is me… now, they break the stigma by revealing the intimacy of his love as a source of inspiration for the entire film .
JLo focuses the entire story on herself, taking a bath in creative egocentrism that does not ask permission but, deep down, it all starts from the proof of love she found in Ben Affleck's letters. Some letters that the director had saved and gave to Jennifer Lopez on the first Christmas they spent together after reconciliation.
“It was a gift my husband gave me on our first Christmas together again. He had a ton of letters that we sent each other from the time we were together years ago and when we got back,” Jennifer explained to Apple Music . “There were also cordial emails but what [Ben] did was put our story in a book. There were many letters, he is a writer so he writes long, beautiful and poetic letters.”
The singer explains that she brought the book at the beginning of the project to “set the tone” and help her team understand “the mission.” “We are going to put this feeling, from this journey and what I learned about the love that I was looking for all my life, what it is, what it means and its existence, in this album and we are going to show people through music a celebration of love, but above all that true love exists and that some things last forever,” says Lopez.
In other words, Jennifer Lopez put on the table all the intimacy of her relationship with Ben Affleck before her musicians and producers , using the private letters that capture the love they feel for each other as a source of inspiration to create the definitive tone of the songs, the album and, consequently, the movie. According to Variety, in another documentary that completes the creative process of This is me… now, titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told (which we would translate as The Greatest Love Story Never Told ) and which premieres on February 27, we will see Ben Affleck appearing apprehensive as he enters the room where his wife exposes her private letters to the team. However, he would have understood and approved of the decision no matter how invasive it was.
“I found the beauty, the poetry and the irony in the fact that it is the greatest love story ever told,” he says in the documentary according to Variety while also supporting his wife by appearing in This is me… now. He does so by representing JLo 's final love and playing a television presenter under prosthetics and makeup (but recognizable) afflicted by the search for universal love.
The love that they professed in their own handwriting is captured in This is me… now as it is an artistic exercise that exalts the search for the soul mate above all things . A search that Jennifer Lopez would have experienced in the first person with written evidence that corroborates it, which recalls the emotions and commitment of reciprocated love. In this case she would have used them as a basis to reveal her most romantic vulnerability , showing herself as a woman who is not afraid to open herself, who dreams of falling in love and marries three times. And that despite the failures she continues to search, learning the importance of self-love along the way.
JLo talks about the magic of love in her film to sell us her songs and new album but, in the process, she reminds the world that her marriage to Ben Affleck is much more than gossip, paparazzi or bored faces. He is the love of her life. It is the result of a personal search. Of her conviction in eternal love, capturing that romantic journey that they experienced in the first relationship between 2002-2004 and the second since 2021 and that they immortalized in letters that Ben kept for decades. And the result is a tour de force that elevates JLo as a woman in love and an artist.
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