Love is Life, and Also Unpredictable
The Decameron is a brilliant, beautiful show that deserves way more praise than the lukewarm reviews. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a love story so beautiful and characters who subverted expectations in the most satisfying ways.
Every time you think a character is an unforgivable lout, you'll be surprised at how human they'll be. The character you think is a buffoon and whom you wish would die because they're THAT level of annoying ends up making you bawl with their words a single episode later, and it still feels in character.
I dunno, the show has pretty mixed reviews, but if you like dark humor and a study on humanity, this show is for you. Also, if you like love stories of any sort, because this show contains several of the single most unique love stories I could have ever imagined. Yes, including queer and... ace love.
*yes i have read boccaccio's work on which it's based
Spiritual, Agape Love: Neifile and Panfilo
I genuinely think the sexless marriage and partnership of a gay man and a devout, neurotic straight woman is one of the most beautiful love stories I've seen in media, ever. They genuinely want each other to be happy, and they aren't content just being each other's "beard" or financial security. They want to know each other more. They want honesty. They want to be together and to have intimacy, just not romantic or sexual.
The scene where they reconcile in front of Ruggiero is stunningly wholesome and--dare I say it--pure.
The scene where Neifile falls in the well and waits for God to save her is clearly a riff on the classic parable of the guy who is drowning and turns down two boats and a helicopter rescue saying "no thanks, God will save me," only to die and get to heaven and cry, "God, why didn't you save me?" Then God replies, "you dumbass, I sent you two boats and a helicopter!"
Neifile is rescued because her husband Panfilo pays someone to rescue her and to tell her God sent a vision telling them where to find Neifile. When she finds out Panfilo orchestrated it, she's furious about him deceiving her. But the reality, we later realize, is that he didn't exactly. Neifile wanted proof God still cared about her. He sent her a husband who loved her so much he would do anything to save her.
Neifile's faith isn't perfectly written, but it's not mocked. In the end, Neifile and Panfilo live like Christ--which is to say, they save their friends even though they die. Neifile dies afraid, but life comes with no guarantees. It's unpredictable, just like love. And after her death, Panfilo seems to lose the will to live--but when he decides to sacrifice his life to die alongside Neifile, it's not so much out of a desire to die as it is out of a desire to have his friends survive. And it's not a coincidence that the foe they face off with is a self-proclaimed prophet who's really a cruel, hypocritical cult leader. Neifile's dead, plague-ridden body is more holy than the cult leader's sword.
Romantic/Eros Love: Misia and Filomena, Tindaro and Stratilia, (and everyone)
Everyone has romantic love and/or a sexual relationship in the story. Everyone has a "pairing," but it is seldom their most important bond.
Dioneo and Licisca
Filomena and Misia
Pampinea and Sirisco
Tindaro and Stratilia
Neifile and Panfilo/Ruggiero
Panfilo and Neifile/Andreoli
The two that are the most important here are Misia and Filomena, and Tindaro and Stratilia. Yet they are both quite unique portrayals as well, because while Misia and Filomena's love is requited, Tindaro's loev for Stratilia is completely unrequited. Yet, its power still shines through.
Tindaro's love for Stratilia is utterly unrequited and stays that way. However, his love for her is nonetheless real and he proves it over and over, and it isn't dependent on her returning it. His determination to love her, no matter what she does or doesn't give him, is honestly a beautiful exploration of unrequited love. Usually in fiction unrequited love is either someone wasting their time or a tragedy.
Rarely does unrequited love have power to redeem and save, but here it does. It motivates Tindaro to change himself for the better and to become the best version of himself, and it saves Stratilia's life and the life of her son.
Yet, the story avoids any kind of iffy subtext about sex corrupting love. Misia and Filomena get a happily ever after (the only pairing in the series that does), but Tindaro's love for Stratilia, which literally starts as hate sex and stays that way for her, redeems Tindaro. So the show avoids saying that sex is all that love is, and avoids the implication that sex ruins love as well.
Familial Love: Licisca and Filomena, Stratilia and Jacopo
The series addresses sibling love in a variety of ways. Filomena and Licisca are clearly sisters long before we get the official reveal that Licisca is actually Filomena's half-sister in blood. And even when we see them fighting and pushing each other off a bridge (literally), they love each other. They can't bear to see each other die, even as they peck at each other and insult each other constantly.
Filomena: Licisca, you saved me again! Licisca: Yeah, you dumb bitch. Love's got long claws.
Truly, a sister exchange right there.
What gets in the way of their familial relationship is class. The series juxtaposes class issues against familial ones quite a bit. Leonardo, for example, we never meet, but the way he treats Stratilia and Jacopo (his son) is pretty terrible.
And yet, Jacopo has a good life. Stratilia loves him, even though he is the reason she can never leave the villa, marry, or have any sort of life of her own. She knows Leonardo never plans to have Jacopo as an heir or treat him as a son in any way, but she loves him and sticks around for him, and doesn't resent him for it. And he in turn adores his mother and wants to protect her. Love is a burden, as Panfilo says directly, but so is life. Love anchors.
What gets in the way of love for this mother and son, temporarily, is again class. Not for herself, but for her son, Stratilia eventually decides to take the villa since Leonardo is dead and Jacopo is the rightful heir. But clinging to class and material possessions in this series never ends well.
When Stratilia realizes her desire to seize the villa in the name of justice for her son will likely get them all killed, she cries and blames herself for their coming deaths.
As Tindaro says:
Stratilia: I failed my son Tindaro: No. You have given him everything. And love most of all. He is blessed. You understand that Jacopo? You are blessed.
In other words, love doesn't have to be perfect. It can involve major screwups and pain, but that doesn't mean the life they had or the love was any less powerful.
Also of note: the whole reason the peasants turn to mercenaries and cults is because the rich lock themselves away from the poor, when in reality they are all humans. You can't counter acts of God (or, y'know, rats) but where humans do have power, in all the terrible hands life slaps them with, is the ability to love each other and help each other. While this sounds cheesy, the juxtaposition of this idea with a black comedy plague setting actually makes it shine.
The Loveless: Pampinea
At the start of the story, there are two buffoons: Tindaro and Pampinea.
Tindaro is misogynistic and pathetic, and Pampinea is equally insufferable but more sympathetic because her insufferable tendencies are clearly driven by her status as an unmarried woman in a patriarchal, misogynistic society.
Yet Pampinea has all of these kinds of love, and can't accept any of them. Sirisco loves her and thinks she is beautiful. She not only pushes him away, but is cruel in doing so. She has the respect of Neifile and Licisca. She has unrequited loyalty and love from Misia, and uses it to manipulate Misia into killing Ruggiero for her (and the irony is that Misia, who is traumatized from killing Ruggiero, then kills Pampinea).
Pampinea is a well-written villain, imo. You love to hate her, but you also see her humanity. The way she treats Misia, though, is increasingly horrifying, and their relationship foils Tindaro and Dioneo's, Filomena and Licisca's, and Leonardo's and Stratilia's/Sirisco's.
In fact, Filomena even directly acknowledges that she's no better than Pampinea for how she's treated Licisca. Tindaro doesn't get the chance to have that realization about Dioneo while Dioneo is alive, but he does give him a decent burial when he definitely didn't have to. And, there's an aspect of tragedy there too--Dioneo did care about Tindaro, but Tindaro's inability to show any kind of care for Dioneo while he lived means that he doesn't realize that Dioneo did in fact find love in the end, though he acknowledges that this was what Dioneo did primarily want in life.
In contrast, Pampinea has chance after chance after chance to choose differently, to choose a single bond, and she doesn't. She also recognizes that her servant wants love more than anything, just like Tindaro and Dioneo, but instead of using that to honor them, she uses it to degrade and manipulate Misia.
Bad Victims and Toxic Love: Misia and Pampinea
Misia is a bad victim. It takes forever for her to realize she's being abused and even longer to accept it. She does in fact murder someone for her mistress, and she keeps going back to Pampinea even when it means essentially betraying Filomena, whom she romantically loves. When she asks for help, she pushes the people she's asked away.
Eventually, the only way she sees to free herself is to kill Pampinea, because love for Pampinea is a way to cage someone rather than a way to set them free. Pampinea's already introduced the idea of killing for love, so it's not really a surprise when this comes back to bite Pampinea and she is killed.
Yet the story doesn't demonize Misia for this. It shows how damn difficult it is to free oneself from an abuser, and how genuine the love for an abuser can be. In fact, the victim can often not even realize they're being abused and taken advantage of.
Furthermore, Misia's abuse doesn't make her a better person. Most people tend to assume that victims cry and wait for rescue, but that's not realistic. Victims lash out and can sometimes have a massive cognitive dissonance, as demonstrated in the show when Misia begs Sirisco for help and then blames him for Ruggiero's death when he calls her out on Pampinea's abuse of her.
Even Misia killing Pampinea isn't portrayed as a moral positive. It's tragic, but it also doesn't have to destroy Misia's future. Filomena loves her and forgives her, and that love can tether Misia to life despite her having two murders under her belt.
Sirisco also goes down a bad path, similar to Misia. He brings misery and problems to the villa in his outage over Pampinea's treatment of him. Yet he does repent after he sees that his actions have directly led to the deaths of the peasants who treat him well, and he survives.
