By Eliza Goodpasture
When I moved to England five years ago, I fully intended to date an English boy. I had a very American vision of finding London’s streets paved with Hugh Grants and Mr Darcys, which was, of course, ridiculous. Until, exactly three weeks after arriving, I fell in love with my second Hinge date.
Almost as soon as our relationship began, I started to think about why it might not last. There were big obstacles to overcome: visa troubles, families and friends on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and, of course, my inability to know how to answer the question ‘Alright?’. Where would we make our home? Would it ever feel like it belonged to both of us?
Luckily, I had a roadmap from one of the most seminal transatlantic films: The Parent Trap, a classic 1960s movie remade for Gen Z. Nick Parker (played by Dennis Quaid) and Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson) meet, literally, on the Atlantic, on board the Queen Elizabeth 2, and have a whirlwind romance and wedding. Their brief marriage produces identical twins Annie and Hallie, at which point they break up, make the ill-considered decision to each take one baby, and go their separate ways.
When we encounter them eleven years later, after their twins have secretly switched places to meet the other parent, Nick and Liz have both crafted beautiful lives for themselves. Their houses, in Napa, California, and in London, are canonical creations of Nancy Meyers, the film’s director. Both share a careful balance between tastefully highbrow and cosy enough to nap in: the creamy white Kensington terrace comes replete with butler and tweed-clad grandfather; the Napa vineyard villa is tiled and sprawling with huge, blocky modernist paintings on the walls and views of the rugged landscape through the windows.
These houses feel like two sides of me, two parallel dream lives that I could be living. I can see myself drifting into the terracotta orange entry hall of the Kensington house after a long dinner in some intimate candlelit Italian restaurant in Soho, leaving my shoes and coat scattered behind me on the cluttered stairs, and then sleeping for twelve hours between decadent bed sheets before making a business call to Paris from my boudoir.
But I can also see myself splashing into the pool at the Napa house after a long hike in the hills, napping on the porch, and then trotting down to my wine cellar for something to go with the ragu bubbling in the spotless open-plan kitchen. Two lifestyles that feel like they could never overlap, but really have so much in common: comfort, an exceptional work-life balance, and good wine.
As the credits roll at the end of the film, the twins having successfully reunited their family, I think about the impending logistics. How will they make it all work? Will Nick and Liz be able to compromise their perfectly perfect lives? I imagine the homes will belong to both of them: a process of both gaining and giving up. They will have to share, which is the work of a lifetime – but it's this that will make them, in my mind, real homes not movie sets.
Photography: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo; Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo; Walt Disney Pictures
