I’d have liked to jump into another one of Diego Luna’s TV projects, because he’s seriously done so much good TV work, but I also want to make sure I’m not in the middle of a show when season 2 of Andor hits—April 22nd, woooo! So I’ll be throwing in more film and miscellaneous stuff in the interim, along with one of his shorter TV offerings.
Seeing actors I like in old music videos is always an interesting experience. It may or may not involve actual acting (beyond, generally, kissing and/or other sensual stuff,) and there may or may not be any discernible plot. In Diego Luna’s case, this Katy Perry video tells a surprisingly complete story.
The title is self-explanatory for the song. It’s about looking back and regretting the loss of an old love. The verses are catchy and filled with story lyrics, reminiscences about a first real adult relationship and wistful lines like, “Talk about our future like we had a clue. / Never planned that one day, I'd be losing you.” The chorus comes in hard and really hits: “In another life, / I would be your girl. / We keep all our promises, / Be us against the world. / In another life, / I would make you stay, / So I don't have to say / You were the one that got away.”
The video is more plot-oriented than many, bookended by scenes that aren’t set to the music. This framing device features Perry in slightly uncanny old-age makeup, which takes the “look back in regret” theme about as far as it can go. Meanwhile, the “meat” of the video, the actual song, shifts back and forth between the older Perry and flashbacks of her youthful relationship with the eponymous one that got away. While the video hits all the main beats of the relationship, both good and bad—this is, after all, a song about a lost love—it reaches a point where its story diverges from the story in the song, which is kind of odd. As a video, it works beautifully, but as a companion to the song, it begs the question, “Did you listen to the whole thing?” A bit like the instances on Glee where it’s clear they didn’t go beyond the title and/or the chorus in terms of matching a song to the theme of the episode.
Diego Luna plays the lost love that the song revolves around. In the flashbacks, he and Perry are wrapped up in their art and their relationship almost equally. They’re a bit bohemian, a bit rock ‘n’ roll, and they fill their ramshackle love nest with passion and beauty. It gets trite in places, but the video makes it work. We see why they love each other, the way they’re both attracted to what’s different and creative and exciting. But we also see why they fall apart, how their passion for their art is tied to a volatility that makes them prone to dramatic actions in their anger. It’s an “epic” relationship of the Veronica Mars/Logan Echolls variety, very “lives ruined [and] bloodshed.”
This setup gives Luna a broad canvas to work with in the span of four minutes. As the lover, he’s intensely focused as he creates and brimming with light and love as he shows his work to Perry, his muse. In a photography session, they both play with gender, and he leans into the feminine quality of his beauty as he peeks out coyly behind a fur-trimmed coat. When he’s in the creative zone and his impatience rises, his temper flares—both he and Perry do (and presumably say) things they’ll come to regret.
A while back, James Corden brought up the video when Luna was a guest on his show, and Luna predicted that his death would someday be announced as, “The guy from the video of Katy Perry just died.” Even though the video winds up telling a somewhat different story than the song, I understand why it has such enduring popularity with Perry’s fans. It’s romantic and emotionally charged, and Luna creates what really does feel like a character in his interactions with Perry in a pretty short time.
Recommend?
In General – If you’re at all into pop music, I would. It’s an enjoyable song with a memorable video.
Diego Luna – Why not? It’s less than five minutes out of your day, and Luna is effective in it.
Warnings
Drinking, sensuality, and thematic elements.
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