THE OBJECT OF BEAUTY

In this romantic comedy, a high-rolling commodities trader and his suspicious girlfriend find themselves stranded in a luxurious London hotel room with no money and a large bill.

The jet-set duet, Jake and Tina, have come to confuse life with lifestyle, and they are paying dearly for it. An untimely labor strike has left a hefty cocoa crop, and Jake’s substantial stake in it, to rot in the South American sun. Consequently, Jake and Tina are now stranded with not so much as a penny of credit left on their American Express card to pay for an exorbitant hotel bill.

The good news, though, is that Tina owns an important object of beauty which could solve their insolvency. The bad news is that someone unseats it before they can unload it.

The theft of their valuable last resort leaves them high, dry and prey to the unthinkable: for the first time in their lives, they have more time than money to kill. For the first time in their relationship, they must rely on each other. By the movie’s end, Jake and Tina, though still searching, come to realize that life is more than possessions, power and success.

While it has been said that living well is the best revenge, here it is shown that living well can often become the most likely cause of life’s traumas. In Jack and Tina’s case, the well-heeled couple also learn that a quick fiduciary fix can turn revenge against the world into vengeance against each other.

Still, their ordeal forces them to re-examine their values. Tina, though legally married to another man, comes to look at Jake’s love rather than his money to meet her needs. Jake questions his values. “There’s nothing in my life worth sticking to. I have no calling,” he says. While it is a step in the right direction for them to regard each other as a more important object of beauty than money, how sad that they fail to comprehend who the real object of beauty is, that is, Jesus Christ.

So in the end they cling to each other, not realizing that true love, security and identity come from who we are in Christ. As Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”