Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, damned if they live separate, successful lives for a couple of years and seemingly have nothing to do with one another anymore. That is the story of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, two former Twilight sweethearts who broke up and moved on and yet are still forever dragged back into the past so we can all pick at what’s left of them.
The most recent example? Both Stewart and Pattinson were scheduled to make appearances at the Venice Film Festival, an annual event where a guy sets up a makeshift screen at Muscle Beach and shows old workout videos. But at the last minute, or close to the last minute, Pattinson pulled out of his scheduled appearance, saying that he was too busy filming The Lost City of Z in Ireland. Sounds believable. But the whispery Merteuils and Valmonts at Page Six insist that’s not the real story.
They quote some unknown source as saying that the real reason Pattinson decided not to go to Venice is that he didn’t want to run into Stewart. Which could be true, I guess, but there is nothing there to really support that claim. People back out of those kinds of things all the time. Well, O.K., people don’t, but celebrities do. It’s common. The schedule of shooting a movie is unpredictable, erratic. It’s very likely that Pattinson was, in fact, stuck filming in Ireland.
But that doesn’t matter. Because Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart will always be Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. They can date other women, they can give interviews about their new lives, they can grow up and change and thrive, but they will always be stuck together, seared into our gossip cortex as one entity, forever circling each other, forever in a fraught pas de deux. I’m sorry, Robert and Kristen. This is just how it is.
I mean, what can they do? What will it take for us to let them live separate lives? Robert Pattinson is engaged! Kristen Stewart is rumored to be dating various other people. Her career is flourishing; she was the first American woman to ever win a César Award—and she deserved it! Pattinson seems busy, too, job-wise. These young people, no longer quite so young, are living full, varied lives. And yet . . . all we do is push them together, still, and say “kiss” or “fight” or “be eternally awkward with one another.” That’s all we want from them! And it just isn’t right.
Who knows why, really, Robert Pattinson didn’t go to Venice. There is literally an infinite, unknowable amount of possible reasons why. A busy work schedule, a summer cold, a fear/distrust of Italians. There are so many things it could have been, and yet we’ll zero in on Kirsten Stewart’s presence at the same sprawling festival and tell ourselves that must be it. I’ll bet it’s very easy to not run into someone at the Venice Film Festival—only go to the thing you’re supposed to go to and don’t mingle at the parties and stuff—and yet Page Six, and its anonymous source, make it sound very difficult. Because that is the story they want. And, I fear, it is the story that RPatz and KStew are doomed to live forever. Maybe they should call Jennifer Aniston and ask her for advice.
