Synopsis
Two closely-bound, emotionally wounded siblings reunite after years apart.
1984 Directed by John Cassavetes
Two closely-bound, emotionally wounded siblings reunite after years apart.
Gena Rowlands John Cassavetes Diahnne Abbott Seymour Cassel Margaret Abbott Jakob Shaw Michele Conaway Eddy Donno Joan Foley Al Ruban Tom Badal Risa Blewitt David Rowlands Robert Fieldsteel Raphael De Niro Tony Brubaker John Roselius Jessica St. John Frank Beetson John Finnegan Gregg Berger John Qualls Christopher O'Neal Susan Wolf Doe Avedon Xan Cassavetes Dominique Davalos Julie Allan Renee Le Flore Show All…
迷雾狂情, 爱的溪流, 사랑의 행로, Torrents d'amour, Love Streams - Scia d'amore, Szeretetáradat, Corrientes de amor, 爱的激流, Amantes, Потоки любові, Потоки любви, Proudy lásky, Kärleksströmmar, 暗湧
“This picture, this picture; I don't give a fuck what anybody says. If you don't have time to see it, don't. If you don't like it, don't. If it doesn't give you an answer, fuck you. I didn't make it for you anyway.” — John Cassavetes on Love Streams
the perfect endcap to Cassavetes’ career (Big Trouble doesn’t count), and he knew it. you can sense his savoring of life in the bittersweet way he and Gena Rowlands slow dance, lit only by the light of a jukebox and the moon. in the same room, he later briefly looks straight into the camera, his face slightly obscured through the rain-streaked window, and it hits like the most intimate goodbye. i’m grateful he got to say goodbye.
not just the bottomless need for love but the inexhaustible compulsion to express it, to find an outlet for it, to enact it.
One of the pleasures of watching a movie for me is taking leave of time. By that I simply mean not wearing a watch. And making sure to always switch off (off!) my mobile phone. It means that when you're watching the film, you have to feel how much time has passed and how much time remains. When attempting to make that calculation is too easy, and when you're right about it, you know you have a bad movie. I genuinely believe that a key barometer of quality filmmaking is when, temporally speaking, you don't know where you are. I think it might relate to that cliché when people talk about "losing yourself" in a movie. Anyway, I was watching…
“Do you believe that love is a continuous stream?
Cassavetes is above all else a cinema of flesh, of an overwhelming need of embracing the material world. Love Streams could've been one type of proposition - she loves too much, he withholds everything - but end up been a very different one, less based on easy oppositions: a post-apocalyptic world of feelings whose Adam and Eve just happens to be brother and sister, one less given to carnal thoughts as much a constant emotional need. It is his most beautiful sustained film and along with Chinese Bookie the most imaginative, every cut bringing a total mystery (although the early fatalistic film tend to contracts its world while Love Streams embrace…
This may actually be a terrible movie. For the first time I saw the possibility of how people could be perplexed, or completely disengaged by this. More than any other Cassavetes movie too, this thing is enigmatic, bordering nonsensical, and has an overwhelming sincerity masked by performative excess, that leans into its schizophrenic quality (intentionally). It's honestly barely a movie; there's no plot, things just sort of happen, it builds up to a wildly obtuse and out of left field third act, and has some really counter-intuitive characterizations/performances/performers, alongside the trademarked half-sentences, constant laughter, shitty editing, and overall amateurish charisma. All these things just make me love it more. This is an artist, knowingly going to die, just laying it…
so much love for john and everything he did. so much love for gena rowlands and her miniature horses. so much love for the scene where both of them arrive home and talk about what creativity means, even if they’re brother and sister here, it felt like taking a peek into their real life marriage. so much love for the all the truthfulness and affection i’ve felt watching cassavetes films. happy birthday john, love is everything.
You promised me
You promised me
You promised me
You promised me
after learning about how Cassavetes created this film after being told by his doctor that he only had 6 months to live makes it an even tougher pill to fully swallow. Love Streams a heart-wrenching masterpiece. Cassavetes and Rowlands both put on, again, incredible performances as two unhinged people. That dream sequence of the stage performance is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
It’s crazy to even imagine Cassavetes directing and starring in this when he had been told he had such a short time to live and yet he still wanted to put such a fascinating piece of art out there for the world to see. I’m happy he got 5 more years of life after this was made. RIP.
Seeing this in a theater was an interesting experience that I’m not sure I’d repeat. I may be too precious with this movie simply because it means so much to me, but it was difficult to hear people laugh through parts that I consider devastating. Perhaps I missed some of the humor watching the movie in intimate settings in the past, but I feel like Cassavetes backs each line with such defined levels of truth that anything that feels awkward or funny hits me with equal parts vulnerability. Don’t get me wrong, I love levity and this film has it in spades, but it simultaneously deeply understands the purpose levity serves in our lives. If I’m truly connecting with Cassavetes…
The Criterion Challenge 2021
Week #1: Watch a film released the year of Criterion's inception (1984)
Do I believe in true love? Why, yes I do. One only has to witness John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands slow dancing to a light-up jukebox in order to say that love is something inexplicably and devastatingly real.
Love Streams is a solitary film by an unorthodox filmmaker. As we weave through this emotional labyrinth, and wander through an endless sequence of dimly lit rooms, frantic car rides, and the occasional perfectly framed still, we see characters who are in desperate need to give love and to be loved. It is a theme tackled countless times but never in the same complexity as Cassavetes captures here. This film is an intimate, heightened tale of endless self-searching. Here’s to a wonderful adventure of exploring more of Cassavetes’ films in the future.
"love is a stream, it's continuous, it doesn't stop"
the way john jumps into the cab and engulfs gena in the most tender and sincere hug when their characters see each other in the film for the first time... i love they
even after 6000 films watched, cinema still finds the power to affect me in ways I’ve never felt. have said before that it feels like I’ll never have the words for Cassavetes, that he’s one of those filmmakers that hits me on such a personal level that the words just won’t come properly. but this felt like staring back at the mistakes I’ve made with relationships, familial, platonic and romantic, and being forced to linger within them. made me think about life from my mother’s eyes. it’s been a month since I last heard from the person I love, after only a few weeks of precious optimism about her COVID recovery. I have nothing left but the brief glimmers of…