IN LOVE AGAIN
Title: “In Love Again”
Screenplay, Broadway Libretto, Music & Lyrics by Allan Jay Friedman
Logline: “In Love Again” is a romantic reincarnation drama spanning across two lifetimes. Jonathan and Samadara know they have a soulmate but haven't met in this lifetime. Their love, cut short by tragedy in a past life, pulls them towards each other. Will they find their one chance to complete their rhapsody in love again?
Genre: Romantic Drama with Musical Elements
Setting: Various romantic locations including New York City, Sri Lanka, Paris, and Switzerland.
Plot Overview:
It's present-day Sri Lanka. We meet Jonathan, a gifted pianist, performing his “Rhapsody of Love” at a concert. Shortly after, he learns that his beloved mentor, Parker, has passed away. Parker has left Jonathan a photo album and a letter.
The photo album transports us to Michael and Sara's childhood in Sri Lanka. They vow under their favorite coconut tree to never let anything come between them. Through a musical montage, we watch their love grow leading up to the night before their wedding. As a wedding gift, Michael gives Sara the beginning of a rhapsody, written on a napkin. Sara presents him a painting of them under their tree. Shortly thereafter, they die in a tragic car accident.
Immediately, we smash into two new lives, when a baby boy is born in New York, Jonathan. And, a baby girl is born in Sri Lanka, Samadara. Fast forward to adulthood where Jonathan is a successful pianist and composer. He often finds himself playing the first measures of a rhapsody he’s known all his life but can’t seem to finish. We meet Samadara, now an accomplished artist, while visiting NYC. She stumbles upon Jonathan's concert in Central Park. She feels an inexplicable stirring in her soul when she hears his music and sees him for the first time.
Back in Sri Lanka, she opens an art boutique where she hangs one of her paintings. It's of a misty couple beneath a coconut tree and a full moon, a place she says she was born knowing but has never been.
Jonathan begins a European tour starting in Sri Lanka. He meets Parker for the first time and they bond over music. Samadara attends one of Jonathan’s concerts. She's transfixed by his lyrics about a soul love he knows is there but hasn’t met yet. It hits her deeply because she feels the same way.
Jonathan returns to New York and gets engaged to another woman. But he is soon back in Sri Lanka for a grand musical event. While there, Jonathan plays piano at a local bar, the first strains of the rhapsody that haunts him. Samadara is having dinner there when she’s drawn to the music. They lock eyes and connect but she leaves before they can speak.
Jonathan is certain. A song rushes to him and he writes it, passionately, furiously, for her. He must find her. He searches high and low until he enters an art gallery where he sees her next to her painting, “Lone Coconut Tree.” He recognizes the tree. He asks her to join him so he can take her there. We see them start to fall in love as they kiss beneath the tree. He can't bring himself to tell her he’s engaged.
Their paths separate as Jonathan’s fiancé and Samadara’s current beau intervene. Upset after learning of his engagement, Samadara leaves again. She tells him if he were the one he would have waited for her. Jonathan ends his engagement and goes on tour with a slew of new heart-wrenching love songs.
When he collapses with a heart condition, Parker takes him to Switzerland to recuperate. Parker hears Jonathan play the rhapsody’s opening notes on the hotel’s piano. In a climactic revelation, Parker gives Jonathan the napkin with Michael’s original notes. They both realize he is Michael reincarnated.
In current-day Sri Lanka, we’re back with Jonathan as he reads Parker’s final letter to him. With renewed passion, he approaches the piano and performs his completed “Rhapsody of Love." Samadara, there for her rehearsal dinner, is drawn again to the music. She is confused by her feelings and tells him she’s getting married. He leaves her and then realizing his mistake rushes back to her as she comes to him too. They find their way back to the coconut tree and carve their names, below Michael and Sara’s. They kiss in the rain and know they’re in love again, forever this time.
The film ends with “In Love Again,” celebrating their timeless connection.
Themes: Eternal love, destiny, the power of music, and the timeless bond of soulmates.
Tone and Style: A heartfelt and mystical journey blending past and present, with vibrant musical numbers anchoring and capturing the depth of Jonathan and Samadara’s epic soulmate love story.