Aahana Swrup
‘Love at First Kiss’ is a Spanish romantic comedy film set in the city of Madrid. The movie is directed by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa and can be found on Netflix. It follows the story of Javier Castaños, owner of a publishing house, who possesses unusual prophetic abilities regarding his love life. Anytime he kisses a person for the first time, the entire course of their relationship flashes before his eyes. When a series of events ends with him sharing a kiss with his best friend’s girlfriend, Lucía, he watches a happy, long future unfold for the first time in his life.
Caught in a sticky situation, Javier tries to find a way to secure the perfect romance he has always wanted without forever ruining things with his best friend, Roberto. Will his romantic foresight lead him to true love, and will he find his happy ending? With a cast of likable and fleshed-out characters, and a quirky yet exciting plotline, this story brings an authentic and charming touch to the idea of destined love. Here is everything about the ending of ‘Love at First Kiss,’ explained. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Love at First Kiss Plot Synopsis
The story begins with a cynical Javi who is about to break up with his girlfriend at a bar on a Friday night. However, an interruption from one of his previous girlfriends reveals that the set-up is a consistent shtick of his. He has a long history of breaking up with people, seemingly without any reason, just because he doesn’t “see a future with them.” Though his ex-girlfriends seem to take this excuse simply as just a sign of what they assume are Javi’s commitment issues, it is instead the simple truth.
From the young age of 16— when Javi had his first kiss— he has been able to see the future of his relationship with whomever he kisses. Ever since his first heartbreak, he has learned to heed his prophetic first kiss visions and thus never lets his relationships get past anything casual. Things take a sudden and unexpected turn when a blind date goes wrong. It ends with Lucía and Javi sharing a drunken kiss. As a montage of a magical, fairytale romance unravels inside his mind, Javi realizes with stark certainty that Lucía is the love of his life.
After that night, their friendship progresses, and the pair start to feel a yet untapped chemistry between them while Lucía doubts her relationship with Roberto. Javi is convinced that Roberto and Lucía are never going to work. At the same time, he is also unwilling to let go of the future he could have with Lucía. At the advice of his regular bartender— Ariana, he has a conversation with Roberto in which he tries to convince him that perhaps he is not as happy in this relationship as he thinks he is.
In a feat of gross miscommunication, Roberto gets the idea that he should propose to Lucía instead and surprises her in the middle of her workday to get down on one knee. Lucía turns him down. Shortly after the couple breaks up, Javi and Lucía hook up, leading to both feeling awful for essentially betraying Roberto in their respective ways.
Though Lucía tries to avoid a relationship with Javi initially, it ends up being inevitable, and the two fall into a picturesque dream-like romance. Their relationship advances, and they live through all the moments Javi had seen them sharing in his vision, and everything is seemingly as perfect as it could be. That is, until the predictability of the relationship starts to catch up on them. Javi’s pre-emptive avoidance of unpleasant experiences and uncanny inability to be surprised, both brought on by his earlier vision, start to strain their relationship.
Love at First Kiss: Do Javi And Lucía End up Together?
Following his first kiss with Lucía, Javi sees his future with her. After years of failed, dead-end relationships, his future with Lucía is unlike any other, promising a long, happy life together. As he spends more time with her, he realizes that her relationship with Roberto is not completely fulfilling. Therefore, when they eventually break up, it’s only a matter of time before Javi and Lucía end up together. They’ve been together for a long time, their relationship evolving from a spur-of-the-moment hook-up to a strong, reliable life spent together. Javi is content in this relationship because, for the first time in his life, he knows that it won’t end.
Throughout the story, characters often paint Javi out to be a skeptic who can’t seem to be able to ever commit to relationships. But while Javi may be a skeptic, he is also a hopeless romantic. He wants a true-love romance, but because of his prophetic abilities, he can never fully commit to anyone because he already knows how it will end. He does have commitment issues, but not because he doesn’t want to commit; he just can’t. Why would he put time and effort into a relationship he already knows is doomed from the start? So when Lucía presents the opportunity for a fruitful relationship, Javi is all-in. But the worst part, of course, about knowing exactly how a relationship will unfold— is knowing exactly how a relationship will unfold.
In his professional life, Javi constantly deems writer Sonsoles’ current literary endeavor as not good enough because he thinks it’s formulaic and uninteresting. It’s a bad book because it feels like something Javi has already read before. Similarly, although Javi and Lucía’s relationship is wonderful without any obvious complications, it will always be predictable to Javi because he’s seen it before. Only when Lucía tries to throw Javi a surprise birthday party, and Javi does a spectacularly bad job of acting surprised, things start to fall apart.
Javi already saw the party coming; worse, he already saw the surprise trip to Marrakesh that Lucía had gotten for him too. All of this leads to Lucía feeling like she has become dull and repetitive. She puts some space between them and leaves for Marrakech without Javi, instead taking Esther, her friend, with her. Both partners start doubting the other’s place in their lives. Their relationship now has an undeniable air of monotony, and neither partners are happy with it. Ultimately, neither is fulfilled and satisfied, and they realize they’ll be happier with different people leading to their break up.
Who Does Javi End up With?
All of Javi’s relationships fail, and even when he finds the one that logically should have been it for him, it still ends up slipping away from him. Javi’s gift of being able to see the future, when examined closely, reveals itself to be instead a curse. If you know how a story will end, you can’t enjoy it. The narrative repeatedly tries to convey to the audience the importance of uncertainty and unpredictability. In fact, Ariana’s whole character is basically the personification of wild, impulsive choices. The same is why that when Javi kisses Ariana— he sees nothing. There is no future prophesied to him; what he sees instead is just them together in the moment. At first, Javi misinterprets it to mean his prophetic abilities are gone now that he has supposedly found the one. But this theory is eventually questioned when Javi realizes Lucía and him weren’t meant to work out.
Throughout his life, Javi never got the opportunity to find an actual meaningful romantic relationship that challenged him and kept him on his toes. Ariana, however, in true manic pixie dream girl fashion, embodies spontaneity. Narratively she was everything Javi was not. She took risks— something Javi never did in his love or professional life. She constantly surprises Javi with her reckless, eclectic view of life. In the end, Javi has let go of some of his inhibitions and starts living in the moment instead of the future.
The final scene shows Javi kissing Ariana as we cut to a black screen. It is reminiscent of the couple’s first kiss and implies that, like Ariana, Javi is also living in the moment. As a result, the romance between Javi and Ariana is unlikely to fizzle out. Javi has finally embraced uncertainty as a part of life. And so, when he runs after Ariana in the street and tells her he’s willing to follow her wherever she goes, it’s the final nail in the metaphorical coffin for the character development he underwent throughout the story. Moreover, Javi’s quest of finding “the one” also concludes as he finally finds a partner to enjoy the small moments of life without thinking of the bigger picture.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Love at First Kiss Based on a True Story?
