Earlier this week, I took my boyfriend to the Gen Art Film Festival for the screening of (500) Days of Summer, the movie marketed as “not a love story.” Without ruining any key plot points, I’ll simply say that for all that candidness, I was still prepared for it to be nothing else but a love story. And…it was.

Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on it, I think viewers of this movie can be sorted into two groups: those who will hear that it is not a “love story” and immediately accept that the movie won’t provide a “Hollywood ending,” and those who will hear that it is not a “love story” and still watchfully wait for the plot twist that provides some form of happiness in the end.

Definitively, I am in the latter category. And if that makes me a hapless greeting card writer like the movie’s protagonist, Tom (as my boyfriend says it does), then so be it.

As for the plot twists, I’ve known enough of my own to know that love doesn’t always come packaged like you think it will. Which is why I don’t think love is what people have long thought of it as anymore. I don’t think it can be limited by its “traditional” classifications- the standard Girl meets Boy, they fall in Love, get Married, buy fine china and a House, have Babies, The End sort of thing (I mean, what does that “ending” imply anyway?). I guess I’m saying I just don’t think that a relationship has to follow a set pattern for it to be considered a love story.

As for the movie’s “love story,” I’m certain that when it’s released next month, the music and cinegraphic creativity will draw you in as the story unfolds and refolds in endearing and relatable, heartbreaking and funny ways. You too will empathize with Tom, as I did, when he padded down to the corner grocer in his bathrobe for Twinkies. And you’ll smile in recognition of the TRIUMPH! of finally having the one you’ve lusted after (though in our world it often comes without a synchronized dance sequence), and ache for the familiarity of it irrevocably crashing down.

Maybe (500) Days of Summer isn’t the love story you think it will be, but it’s certainly a memorable and authentic story about love and the seasons it gives way to.