Documentary: Guilty pleasures (2010), Julie Moggan (GB)

‘Real life starts where a book ends, but you can also start another book.’

The title of this documentary sounds like a pornographic or erotic movie or book, but 

it is about Harlequinbooks published by Mills and Boon in London and are all about dreams and love and desire. 

In this documentary we follow author Roger Sanderson who writes under the name of Gil Sanderson. Next to him we see other persons, like the young Japanese woman Hiroko who is not happy with her married life and reads Harlequinbooks to dream about another life. She wants as much as romance in her life as in these books, but her husband cannot fulfill her needs, so Hiroko starts to take private dancinglessons by the handsome and goodlooking teacher Ijima. When she cannot afford these lessons anymore, she convinces her husband to take grouplessons together and finally they win a contest and her dream becomes reality. 

The British Shirley and Phil Davies are less lucky. Phil is suffering from a bipolar disorder and thinks about suicide. Shirley reads Harlequinbooks to espace from their painful reality. Sometimes they have a romantic dinner together at home to make life a bit more comfortable and then they listen to the song from The Carpenters ‘It only just begun.’

The Asian Shumita has had a entangling relationship with her friend, as that friend puts it, who loves his Porsche more than her. She flies away in Harlequinbooks. The friend doesn’t like her reading on and on. Shumita doesn’t find what in reality what she reads about. Real life starts where a book ends, but you can also start another book, she sighs. She finally goes to a fortuneteller who advises her to let her lover go, live her own life and wait.  

The American Stephen Muzzonigro is a male model with a lot of muscles and a big chest (see photo). He wears not much more than sunglasses and takes his speedboat over the lake. He can be admired on the cover of many Harlequinbooks. After his divorce he looks for his twin flame, a kind of intimate soulmate, but he has not found her yet. He looks despite of his wealth very lonely.    

Roger Sanderson writes Harlequinbooks for Mills and Boon. All kinds of types: historic, romantic and sexually a bit more explicit. Before a sexscene used to start with dots.

He goes with his notebook to a coffeeshop and writes down what he hears around him. Sometimes a story rolls on like a train but other times it is hard work. It is like a marriage with up and downs, he says. His personages are stereotypes, the man has to be tall and slim, but his caracters develop, he stresses. He loves happy endings, but the persons have to accomplish something before they find love. love, love.