It's one of the most remembered romantic comedies of recent times. At the time (year 2009) I saw it and I had a good memory of it, but I didn't want to analyze it based on a memory that could be conditioned in some way, so I saw it again a few days ago and I ratified that first impression.

As the movie says at the beginning "This is a story about boy meets girl [...] it's not a love story". Tom (Josehp Gordon-Levitt) is a romantic young man, educated by the films and music of the 80s, who believes in love as a manifestation of destiny: we all have a special person in the world with whom we will be happy forever. On the other hand, Summer (Zooey Deschanel) who not only doesn't believe in those things but she tells Tom in one of his first conversations:

"I don't actually feel comfortable being anyone's anything, you know? [...] Love doesn't exist, it's just a fantasy".

There could be no better signal for two people to decide not to be together. However, there are two problems: the first one is that although she thinks that way at that point, Summer is the perfect recipe for that special woman that Tom has always waited for: she is cute, sweet, tender, likes the same music as he does, has a fragile and innocent appearance, but she also has character. And the second problem is that Tom is fun, attentive, creative; both attract each other. One letting itself be dragged voluntarily and the other, almost inadvertently.

Something remarkable is that the movie, instead of telling us the rise of love and then its fall, chronologically, decides to do so in a disorderly manner. We begin to see the film for what happens on day 488 and from there we go to day 1 and then to 290 and so on. But despite this apparent disorder, we understand how the relationship was forged. There are things that Summer does only because she wants to do them, without thinking much about them; and those same things, Tom interprets them as a sign that he has managed to tear down the walls of her soul, that even though she has decided to have a relationship without labels, she is already in love with him. This desire of Tom and his predisposition to believe in love as a destiny, is what ends up causing him greater pain before the attitude, sometimes desidious, sometimes distant, of Summer.
The film combines very well the moments of happiness and sadness and uses balanced melancholy and humor. The dedication of the film, the musical scene that Tom plays after having sex for the first time with Summer, or the talks in which Tom asks his little sister Rachel for advice (a bright young Chloë Grace Moretz), are pretty funny scenes.

One of the scenes that I enjoyed most was the sequence in which Tom goes to a party that Summer invites him to, when they're separated. The screen is divided into Expectations and Reality and it shows how excited people in love are still waiting for more than they can get and constantly crash for that reason. That scene reminded me of the dialogue on the terrace between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall in which while they talk about trivial things, the subtitles are showing us what they're really thinking.
There are two curious facts in the film that reminded me of another movie starring Zoey Deschanel. In (500) Days of summer Tom meets, after Summer, a woman named Allison, which curiously is the same name of the character of Zoey Deschanel in Yes man. And the other fact is that the two characters of Deschanel are fans of Ringo Starr and the Beatles.
For many, Tom crashed because he wanted to. Better said, because he couldn't help it. When telling about her ex-boyfriend, at Tom's request, Summer says why the relationship ended: "What always happens: life". She is a woman who sees as something natural, inevitable, that any relationship ends. And even more clearly he expressed it when she told Tom about a dream she had: she dreamed that she ran, until she floated, until she felt free, safe and the sensation seemed amazing. But she realized that she was alone.

However, the final triumph is for Tom. Yes, Summer, the girl who doesn't believe in love or fairy tales, falls in love and marries. But not with him. Why do I talk about Tom's triumph, then? For what Summer admits in her last encounter: he was right. Love exists. Only that he felt it with her and she felt it with someone else. And here is the valuable lesson of the film: we are free to love a person, but we must remember that that person is also free to love. And it's possible that, as in the movie, that relationship is not mutual. For the good balance between comedy, romance and fun; the details of direction that go out of the ordinary; the performances of the main couple and little Rachel; and for telling a story about love and not a love story like so many others, I think 7/10 is a valid score for a movie that, within its genre, is one of the best I've seen.