Kriti Mehrotra
As a musical film accompanying Jennifer Lopez’s 9th studio album ‘This Is Me… Now’, Prime Video’s ‘This Is Me… Now: A Love Story’ can only be described as equal parts entertaining and intriguing. That’s because it essentially explores this singer-songwriter, dancer, as well as actress’ highly scrutinized love life in one of the most unique and visual ways imaginable thanks to her own stylization. Yet then comes the question of precisely how much of it is actually real plus based upon true facts and how much of it is her re-imagination of old personal experiences.
This Is Me… Now: A Love Story Draws From Reality While Still Being Fictional
From the moment ‘This is Me… Now: A Love Story’ was first announced to the world as a Dave Meyers-directed original, it was openly clarified the movie is simply inspired by Jennifer Lopez’s album. In other words, it is merely a pictorial representation of those of her songs that underscore her hard-won perspective on her decades-long love story with actor Ben Affleck (2002-2004 and 2021-). It thus even includes rather fictional accounts of her three prior marriages — Ojani Noa, Cris Judd, as well as Marc Anthony — plus the tough self-work she did before reconciling with the former for good.
“There’s not a project that I’ve ever been involved with, music or movies or anything, that I didn’t put a bunch of my life into and a lot of my personal experience,” Jennifer candidly revealed in a press conference ahead of this feature’s February 16, 2024 release. “I think as an artist, that’s all you really have to draw on, the experience you have and the personal experience and the experience of other people around you that you’ve born witness to.”
Jennifer continued, “I think with this one, I really wanted to … It seemed like such an important moment in my life, kind of a turning point in my life, and I was at a point in my life where, as a person and as an artist, I could really look at all of the things that I was good at and the things that I felt and knew about myself and put them all into this project in a way. So things professionally, but also personally.” After all, she and Ben tied the knot in 2022.
“Yes, there’s parts of it that feel kind of very autobiographical, and then there’s parts of it that are kind of meta, not quite in a way, not exactly what happened, but also the feeling of that is what happened,” Jennifer then went on to add. “So there was different things about it that were super honest and true, and then there was things that were kind of more for license… and really doing what was best for the entertainment and storytelling of the film.”
Jennifer concluded, “That mix of it, being personal but also being able to be fantastical, surreal, magical is what I think makes it really kind of moving, entertaining, and at the same time, super real.” Because, of course, while the fates or signs may have aligned to teach her about self-love before bringing Ben back into her life, the fact remains she alone had to do the hard work of trusting her support system and blocking out the outside noise to really succeed.
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