Moonstruck is a perfect holiday movie and we should all Cher the spirit of the season

"Everything is temporary!" my mom yelled, doing an exaggerated Brooklyn accent while gesturing with her hands in the Italian way. She was comforting me after a particularly bad breakup, and knew that quoting the one and only Cosmo Castorini would get a smile out of me. Growing up, my family watched Moonstruck so much it became like a family member. It was our tradition to put it on every year during the Christmas break. With its chilly New York scenes, passionate characters in excellent wool coats, and emphasis on bread, bubbles, and big feelings, Moonstruck is absolutely a holiday movie — one that connects with people of all ages and lifestyles in the way that only a brilliant ensemble romcom can.

The 1987 film, written by playwright John Patrick Shanley and directed by Canadian legend Norman Jewison, has so much personality that it seems like sheer luck it didn't come across as a giant, corny ode to Italian American stereotyping. This might've been the case if the script weren't so good, if the direction were less intimate, and if the actors weren't delivering. According to the book Norman Jewison, A Director's Life by Ira Wells, the Moonstruck cast didn't always get along, and this tension, though tiring when the cameras weren't rolling, was harnessed by Jewison. It added to the sense that these were real people in a real family, living through the disharmony that Italian families — and all families, really — are built on.

Moonstruck gets so many things right about the Italian immigrant experience that watching it with my mom, dad, and sister often felt like watching ourselves in an alternate universe where we got to spend the Christmas holidays with our extended family — that very loud, dramatic group of people that we were connected to but lived across the country from. The movie gives us yelling, it gives us conversations about the moon and love, it gives us a family-style meal with multiple dishes where it's understood that the salad is eaten last (or at least not first), it gives us dogs eating human food and mammas threatening nonnos. We see wine that definitely came from someone's homemade supply passed around in a carafe, and a strong older woman wearing a nice blouse to a casual family dinner, unafraid to say things like, "Why are you drinking so much?" to her moody husband. And that's just one dinner scene.

The Castorinis are the anti-WASPS. So often, holiday movies centre around a certain kind of buttoned-up family. But here at the Castorini household, and in the Cammareri Bros bakery, yelling is talking, fighting is effective communication, and saying, "I don't wanna talk about it!" will never get you off the hook. Even more than the theatrics, or the family dynamics, or the ever-present guilt, the detail that ultimately bonded me to Moonstruck is one that transcends language. It's the sigh.

Rose Castorini, beloved matriarch of the household, played by the brilliant Olympia Dukakis, speaks in the language of sighs. They communicate her sorrow, her exasperation, her life story. The sigh Rose lets out when she learns that her adult daughter is cheating on her fiancee (which happens just a few days after she discovers her own husband Cosmo is cheating on her) sounds less like the sigh of a tired housewife, worn down by years of devoted service met with thoughtless neglect, and more like an animal, wounded to its core — a wolf stuck in a trap whimpering because it's tired of howling at the moon. A wolf that no one is noticing. I've been watching Rose since I was a kid, when I understood less about romantic relationships and the interior lives of women than I do now, but I could always identify with her because I could feel her sighs. They jump into the stomach and demand the body get on high alert. Even if her family is ignoring her pain, you, the viewer, cannot. Rose, like the moon, is the key to the whole thing.

Although I grew to understand Rose's sighs more personally as I stumbled through my romantic life, I didn't really know how to produce my own for a long time. A true sigh is earned. I once dated a man who disappeared for weeks at a time without so much as a goodbye. I was tortured by feelings of utter abandonment but never worked up the nerve to confront him about it, let alone sigh emphatically in his face. Then one day, he asked me what my favourite holiday movie was.

"Moonstruck," I said, immediately.

He laughed. "That movie with Cher and her terrible Brooklyn accent? I can't watch that."

In an instant, the velvet curtain lifted to reveal his true nature, and his many infractions slapped me across the face at once, as if to say, "Snap out of it!" He was, to quote Cosmo Castorini's description of Johnny Cammareri — that mamma's boy, lifelong bachelor, and erstwhile fiancee of Loretta Castorini — "a big baby." And one who failed to understand or see the cultural capital and essence of one of the greatest movies of all time.

Besides being a litmus test for human bearability, Moonstruck is also a clever Christmas movie. The season exists only peripherally, and it feels like real life because the characters' lives happen around the twinkling lights and decorated streets in the background. And even though the holiday itself isn't the focus, we still feel the heightened emotions it tends to produce. By not bludgeoning us with Xmas spirit, Moonstruck becomes not only a movie that can be watched from October to April, but one that also transcends the bounds of any religious or cultural tradition, allowing it to enter easily into the pantheon of funny, aching shared human experience.

It was filmed partially in Toronto (filling in for Brooklyn), but the house from Moonstruck is an actual place in the DUMBO neighbourhood that you can look up and visit, if you're so inclined. The summer I lived in Bed-Stuy almost a decade ago, I made the pilgrimage on a hot summer day. I walked up the steps like Rose did, imagining this is how Elvis fans feel when they visit Graceland. But my dedication to bringing the Moonstruck experience into my life didn't end there, and I'm not just talking about my ability to quote the movie verbatim.

A few years later in 2015, I visited my friend Cassandra in Brooklyn right before Christmas. As fate would have it, La Bohème happened to be playing at The Metropolitan Opera — just like in the movie. In Moonstruck, Ronny (the gruff, jaded, one-handed baker) meets Loretta (the widowed, unlucky accountant who's just had her magnificent curly hair dyed possibly for the first time ever) outside of The Met to take her to the opera, and they're both struck by the other's transformation and beauty. She might be dolled up with a killer plum lip, but the glow-up goes beyond appearances; it also marks the completion of Loretta's rebirth. This is her second chance at a lucky life, and one she has given herself. Ronny's look, with his sleek tux and shiny shoes, is symbolic of the depth of his feelings, both for the opera and for Loretta. We've only ever seen him in an undershirt or a bathrobe. His opera attire hearkens back to a bygone era when dressing up was done for certain people and events as a sign of respect. The Met is a night out to get a makeover for. As such, Cassandra and I got our nails done and put on good dresses. It was a cold late December night and we almost didn't make it across town to the theatre — but once we got there, we were astounded by the beauty of the place. It looks just like it does in the movie. The hanging lights were heavenly, the golden curtains opulent, and the New Yorkers in attendance were ravishing in their finery.

We were just two friends at the opera, but we had tears in our eyes just the same as love and heartache played out on the stage below. Watching La Bohème became less about my desire to replicate a scene from my favourite movie and more about truly feeling the music and the moment, just like Loretta and Ronny did. It was perfect. Because it might be a movie that gives us love, luck, and family, but above all, Moonstruck is for feelings.