With love, there's always more to life than meets the eye.
At First Sight is a Melodrama movie released in 1999 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, under the direction of Irwin Winkler and with the starring cast of Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino as the main characters.
The story of the movie begins when Amy Benic, who is taking a vacation at New York City after a traumatic break-up, receives a massage service in a spa from Virgil Adamson, a masseur who's been blind since he was three years old. What appears to be a relaxation moment for the former and a routine job session for the latter kickstarts a relationship between the two characters. Amy eventually learns about a doctor who is capable of restoring eyesight to patients via operation, but Virgil scoffs at the idea initially. He finally accepts to have the operation, and to his surprise he successfully regains vision for the first time since his early childhood. However, this results in an unexpected paradigm shift that not only affects his lifestyle, but also his relationship with Amy,
This movie signified the one and only screenplay by Steve Levitt.
This film provides examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending: By the end of the movie, Virgil's blindness has relapsed and become permanent, and his relationship with Amy seems to be over. However, the two chaarcters meet again in a public plaza and decide to give themselves a second chance, now that they have a much deeper understanding of each other.
- Blind People Wear Sunglasses: Early on in the movie, Virgil wears sunglasses to cover his blind eyes. However, he later stops using them.
- Book Ends: The first thing Virgil saw when he was three years old before going blind was a "fluffly thing" similar to the clouds in the sky, though he cannot remember what it was in his adult years. Near the end of the movie, during a hockey match he and Amy go to see long after he went a surgery to regain his sight, he sees the fluffly thing again (it turns out to be cotton candy),... and around that time his blindness is relapsing, this time permanently.
- But Now I Must Go: At one point during the movie's second quarter, Amy calls Virgil to tell him that she won't be able to visit him in a while due to an emergency regarding a construction project she's helming. Virgil is so emotionally affected that, when he tries to resume his dinner cooking, he accidentally burns his hands by touching the oven (he's blind, so he had no way to avoid it). Luckily, she returns to him later.
- The Caretaker: Jenny, the sister to blind Virgil. She's incredibly overprotective, but gets to justify her reactions as years of disappointment of quack doctors, as well as receiving a Promotion to Parent for her brother at a young age. Though she is called out on her faults, she gets a chance to see them and mend her ways while her brother is temporarily cured of his blindness.
- Caught in the Rain: During a heart-to-heart they have while strolling in the street, Amy and Virgil are caught by an unexpected rain, so they quickly run to the interior of a decrepit house. During their stay there, the two share a moment of intimacy.
- Disowned Parent: After reuniting with his father and hearing his reason for the 20-year-long Parental Abandonment, Virgil is unable to forgive him and disowns him. That's also the last time Virgil sees him (both figuratively and literally, as his blindness has begun to relapse as of that moment).
- In Another Man's Shoes: Early on in the movie, Amy uses a handkerchief to blindfold her own eyes and try to understand how Virgil can move through places despite his blindness. Lacking the trained sense of spatial awareness Virgil has, she quickly clashes against a pile of objects.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Amy is the only person whom Virgil doesn't tell about the imminent relapse of his blindness when it starts happening, and only tells her when they go to a stadium to see the New York Rangers in a hockey match and, upon seeing the one thing he had seen in his early childhood before losing his sight back then (cotton candy), his relapse kicks in abruptly.
- Massage of Love: Amy is so overjoyed over the massage Virgil gives to her that she ends up falling in love with him.
- Melodrama: The movie revolves around the daily struggles of a blind man and the woman who fell in love with him, as well as the paradigm shift that occurs when the man recovers his eyesight thanks to a medical operation.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: A gender-inverted case with Jennie, who doesn't take well that his blind brother Virgil is dating Amy, whom she had never heard of before. Her resentment further increases when Amy talks to her about wanting to take Virgil to a cataract surgery.
- Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Virgil and Amy begin a tender relationship as they know each other; as Amy learns more about Virgil's blindness, she convinces him to go through an eye surgery so he can see once again. Ironically, the success of the surgery and Virgil's ability to see again put into test the existing bond. Virgil has trouble adapting to the things he sees, because he has a difficult time connecting them with the things he knew by touching and hearing. Then the blindness begins to relapse, and Virgil questions if Amy will continue loving him if he completely loses sight again. By the end of the movie, they reconcile.
- Parental Abandonment: Virgil and Jennie were abandoned by their father during their late teenage years. Much later in the movie, Virgil meets his father, who reveals to him that the reason why he went away was due to his perceived failure to make him and Jennie happy due to not having found someone who could restore his son's eyesight.
- Refused Reunion: Virgil's father, who had abandoned him and Jennie many years ago, learns about him having recovered his eyesight and wants to arrange a reunion. Virgil refuses at first because he doesn't feel prepared to confront him. He only accepts to meet his father when his blindness begins to gradually relapse.
- Snow Means Love: After returning to the city, Amy sees Virgil skate in a frozen pond, and the two begin skating together until she falls into the snow in a corner. Virgil lays down close to her and gently touches her face. The two share their First Kiss shortly afterwards.
- Soft Glass: Shortly after arguing with Amy during a reunion party, Virgil tries to run away from her and ends up clashing against a wall of thin glass. He's unable to see it coming due to his untrained eyes (by that point, little time had passed since he recovered his eyesight).
- Temporary Blindness: Inverted. Virgil has been blind since he was three years old, and halfway through the movie he goes through a surgery that brings back his vision; however, this recovery is revealed to only be temporary, and by the end of the movie he's blind again.
- Toplessness from the Back: Some time after Virgil recovers his eyesight, he's taken by Amy to her apartment. The woman begins undressing so Virgil can see her naked for the first time, and the screen shows her exposed back while Virgil is admiring her.
- Tragically Disabled Love Interest: The movie features a rare male example in Virgil, a masseur who lost his eyesight at age three due to congenital cataracts. Amy meets him during a massage session in a spa and gradually falls in love with him, sympathizing with him and trying to find a way to make him see once again. At one point during the movie, he goes through a medical operation and recovers his eyesight; but due to his difficulty to adapt to his new lifestyle, the relationship between him and Amy complicates.
- Trauma Button: When Amy tells Virgil about a doctor who performs cataract surgery and could restore his vision, he angrily refuses and asks her to forget about it. Jennie later reveals to her that this is because Virgil already went through all sorts of methods (both medical and allegedly supernatural) to regain his vision, and one such instance almost killed him. Since then, Virgil has actively tried to forget about wanting to see again, in order to avoid repeating those disturbing moments of his life. He later changes his mind, however.
