In 500 Days of Summer, it was grueling to watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Tom torture himself and try to force a relationship with Zooey Deschanel's Summer. He never took the message she initially gave him about not believing in love. In fact, she offered several hints as the movie progressed that she was disillusioned with the suffocating notion of soulmates, but interestingly enough, the biggest and most telling sign he ignored was her most subtle one.
Now, Tom really should have seen the train wreck coming as she cringed at the thought of marriage and long-term relationships. Her parents' divorce scarred her, so whether it be watching weddings in the movies or just talking about it, commitment wasn't in her foreseeable future.
It was only when they broke up and Summer proceeded to get engaged months later, when his sister, Rachel, told him to revisit his memories and look at the bad, not just the good, that he realized they weren't destined to be together in that fairytale ending. The thing is, this incompatibility was pointed out in a very quiet scene on a train just before a colleague's wedding.
Tom was trying to avoid Summer, as he'd been heartbroken for months but she walked up to his seat and began catching up. As usual, he fell into the trap and when he expressed surprise at her coming to Millie's wedding, she remarked she wouldn't have missed it for the world, adding, "I love Millie!" Tom reacted subtly to this, with a wry look on his face that neither audiences nor Summer picked up on, but he knew this was the first time he ever heard her say the L-word.
As 500 Days of Summer shows, the very concept of love was taboo to Summer and even amid all the personal, intimate secrets they shared, she never said she loved Tom despite dating him for several months. At this point, Tom should have realized that while he felt he was an idealist and a hopeless romantic, he was a fool for pushing the envelope with her. It resulted in him accepting an invite to her party days later, only to be crushed by finding out she was already engaged to someone else. She later admitted in their final meeting of closure that she experienced love at first sight with her soon-to-be husband and she was indeed capable of falling in love, just not with Tom.
It's cruel but much-needed closure, though sadly, it could have been prevented had Tom on the train not been obsessed with getting coffee, chatting as the sun was setting and forcing a rekindling of their fling. It wasn't passion or love, it was lust and he should have acted on his gut feeling when he picked up on her usage of the L-word, positioning himself in a platonic role rather than someone wanting more.
Sadly, Tom set himself up for more heartbreak by disregarding a red flag in 500 Days of Summer. All this time, Summer was seeing the other guy and exploring love, moving on from a shotgun romance that Tom was still painfully clinging to.
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