Like bathing in the seductively sweet smells of incense and peppermint (and we mustn’t forget to add a tinge of hallucinogenic drugs), writer/director/producer Anna Biller’s 2016 fantastical multi-genre film The Love Witch is an amorous hand penned letter to the classic Hollywood era, as well as both the sexploitation and horror pictures of the 1960s and 70s.
Shot in glorious 35mm film (a rare thing these days), the narrative follows Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a stunning young woman getting away from San Francisco to start a new life in Arcata. The first time we see her she is entirely in red. . . a classic vermilion tinged convertible, ruby dress, and even luggage to match – a stop light with mixed messages that is somehow prompting you to go. Yet it is her perfectly done eye makeup that must be watched. . . for it draws you into her piercing gaze, a look that will force you into those chestnut orbs – turning you into a reverse narcissist, only obsessed with a women you’ve never even met.
A self professed witch, she settles down in an apartment found within a converted Victorian era home – a better place for such a person there is not. Elaine is also our narrator for this journey. . . done with a female noir aesthetic, this femme, with a fatale streak, is addicted to love (she’d probably have gotten along smashingly with Robert Palmer).
With an almost man-like thirst for finding the perfect catch, she leaves numerous lovers in her wake. . . the only problem, she combines her stunning beauty with love spells that often leave these guys junkies – desperate for their next fix of Elaine. Combined with her adult outlook is an almost naive perspective – that of a fairy tale lass waiting for her prince charming to arrive on a white horse to sweep her away.
A complex character, Biller’s story teases at her past, abuse and stunted growth giving her, for all of her beauty (and her attempts to project a mask of pure perfection), a lack of true confidence. . . over-reaching and controlling a method for warping and smothering, not finding the true love she so yearns for. Despite her failures in San Francisco, she hopes that things will be different in her newfound oasis. . . those eyes soon ensnaring Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) – a language professor who, in many ways, has hunted women like she goes through men.
Though, as you might expect, things never work out as she imagines, and soon other men might be in her wistful line of sight, namely the married Richard (Robert Seeley) and the guarded cop Griff (Gian Keys). You sometimes almost feel like Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade should appear onscreen, uttering a warning that her reveries are, in fact, “the stuff that dreams are made of” – for it is very likely that pain, death and other troubles will follow her as she continues on this foolhardy path.
In many ways, the film is a story of juxtapositions: Elaine and her new friend Trish (Laura Waddell) – a Brit who doesn’t buy into all of the fairytale poppycock the witch is spouting; the bacchanal ways of her witch brethren when compared to her wish for a certain type of true love (despite the fact men fall like flies after being with her); the tightrope that this yarn spins somewhere between a romance and horror tale; and, perhaps the sad notion that men and women are, in fact, simply very different creatures. With Biller’s characters living in these very black and white worlds, they never seem to be able to find that grey area in the middle – a life of balance that may finally help them succeed, and, in the end, vanquish some of their deep-seated problems and insecurities.
Another juxtaposition of sorts, after highlighting their black and white thinking, the colours of this film are the utter opposite. . . like those toasty, almost surreal palettes of the Technicolor era, this picture absolutely pops. This is where that classic Hollywood aesthetic comes in, for your mind travels back to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo or Marnie, or the lush reds of Gone With the Wind – M. David Mullen’s cinematography doing the very most to capture the spellbinding nature of Robinson, while also making every background and foreground tone come to vivid, almost surreal life (he uses a lot of hard lighting). Even the driving scenes are done with rear projection, harkening back to those distinctive automobile sequences seen in motion pictures ranging from Connery era Bond flicks to Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Also worth noting, Anna Biller also provides the score. . . a multi-dimensional background that is at times like an Italian giallo, at others, capturing the baroque nature of the story, while a very fairy-tale-like sequence (that pops up unexpectedly around two-thirds of the way into the film) finds us transported to an era of minstrels entertaining the King’s court – the whole film, a truly unique composition, that, like the film’s lead, seduces you.
With touches of camp and comedy (as well as tragedy), The Love Witch is an intoxicating mix of genres. . . its classic horror and romance themes updated for the twenty-first century – a sly take on gender roles past and present. A final much needed note – Biller also did much of the costume and set design, taking years to do all of the intricate work to add those specific and important details to set the mood. So, beware the art of the bloody heart, check out this soon-to-be cult classic to learn if there truly can be a happily ever after.