Posted by A Perfect Story is a romantic TV series that landed on Netflix in July 2023. Based on the book of the same name by the Spanish writer Elísabet Benavent, the show has a particularity that surprised everybody: in the final episode, after we follow the whole plot, we watch two different possible endings, going in the opposite direction, and the plot has not really explained which one applies. The reason lies more in the writer’s approach toward creativity applied to romantic novels. Let’s explain it in this article.
You can watch the trailer for A Perfect Story here on Youtube.
A Perfect Story plot explained: why a double ending?
The plot in A Perfect Story reflects many typical mechanisms of romantic literature: a woman and a man, both with a life that is going in an independent direction, both with a romantic partner, with not much in common. However, their paths cross, and they find out that attraction, sometimes, overcomes every difference. Margot and David have different characters, lifestyles, and economic conditions. Still, love can make them match perfectly if that’s what they really want.
This means that the ending, in A Perfect Story, could have gone according to the usual stereotypes of a romantic comedy, with nothing to be explained. It’s what we see in the second ending of the final episode: David doesn’t let Margot leave; he grabs her and says he wants to give their relationship a chance. And things simply work without significant effort: they’ll build their life together and make their love possible, worth every step.
So, how can the double ending be explained in A Perfect Story? The answer belongs to the writer’s creativity and her need to create stories that can surprise readers. In her book, Elísabet Benavent felt the need to drift from the typical happy ending of all romantic novels. Life doesn’t always end that way, and sometimes, a different conclusion can be more surprising, more inspiring. Even though this can give life to a different story than what readers expect from a romantic book.
By providing a double ending, A Perfect Story has explained that life is not necessarily perfect. The reader is free to decide if they prefer the happy ending, where Margot and David will manage to overcome their differences and live together, or the other one, where the two protagonists go on on different lives, each of them finding anyway a dimension that didn’t include the other one.
Love is a strange thing. We tend to fill it with great expectations, seeing it as a supernatural force able to make every story work, even when everything is against us. But there is also a different way of seeing it, and that’s precisely what the double ending of A Perfect Story has explained: love can be simply something that has a start and an end, helping us see where our life should go. We can deeply love someone and then accept that things come to an end, moving on to what’s next for us.
There is a lot of philosophy and reality in the double ending of A Perfect Story. And if it was surprising for you to see a romantic comedy end in a way different than usual, this is precisely what the author wanted to achieve.
