2016 Directed by Anna Biller
Elaine, a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, and then picks up men and seduces them. However her spells work too well, and she ends up with a string of hapless victims. When she finally meets the man of her dreams, her desperation to be loved will drive her to the brink of insanity and murder.
Say hello to your new obsession: A spellbinding homage to old pulp paperbacks and the Technicolor melodramas of the 1960s, Anna Biller’s “The Love Witch” is a throwback that’s told with a degree of perverse conviction and studied expertise that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. Shot in velvety 35mm and seen through the lens of a playfully violent female gaze, the film follows a beautiful, narcissistic young sorceress named Elaine (Samantha Robinson, unforgettable in a demented breakthrough performance) as she blows into a coastal Californian town in desperate search of a replacement for her recently murdered husband. Sex, death, Satanic rituals, God-level costume design, and cinema’s greatest tampon joke ensue, as Biller spins an archly funny — but also hyper-sincere — story about the true price of the patriarchy. There hasn’t been anything quite like it in decades.
the love witch™: "goddess, please, send me a beautiful, sweet man to love me as i love him."
me: can't relate
the love witch™: "in the end, we're all just compost anyway. everything regenerates. i'd like to come back as a cat."
me: can relate
i honestly dont know how i feel about anna biller after reading this (i disagree with.. a lot of what she posits... like ??? & everything after the highlighted bit reads as nonsense to me and there's a whole lot more where that came from in the post but thats just my 2c) but her sense for production design is truly unparalleled.. this movie is beautiful - the costuming, set design, lighting, casting (especially of those "handsome" imo fugly ~all-american~ white dudes who mirror the men that often show up as protags and occasionally love interests in women-centered sexploitation and horror of the era she mimics) are all perfectly evocative of 70s genre films and i think what differentiates her from…
near the end there, i was ALMOST asleep because of how tired i am right now, but then she did THAT™ and i woke RIGHT the fuck up
"Then she starts to reveal little flaws, and after a while, it just gets pretty hard to care." - king douche.
-40/52 Films Directed by Women (2018): boxd.it/1YOgS
- DAILY HORROR HUNT 3 (September 2018): boxd.it/1YcFg
DAY NINETEEN: "September 19, 1692 Corey Giles was crushed to death in the Salem witch trials. Today we are going to watch a horror movie about witches."
A love witch wants love and enacts a spell to get love. The spell works very well and people start to literally die to be with her, then more weird stuff happens. The film is shot beautifully in a late 60s style. I enjoy the Love Witch, but started to lose interest after a while.
The PROS…
"according to the experts, men are very fragile"
samantha robinson is the most beautiful woman alive and every time they shot a close up of her eyes i ascended to a higher plane of existence
An impressive tribute to 60s technicolor horror, but too long and tbh kind of boring.
The tampon joke had me rolling.
“The Love Witch” Potion
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of Jacques Demy aesthetics
1/2 cup of Luis Buñuel (preferably “Belle du Jour”)
13 onces of softcore porn
1/4 cup of finely minced feminism
A dash of “Eyes Wide Shut”
A pinch of “The Patridge Family” vibes
Mix together and pour into a glass container along with some bodily fluids. Herbs and used tampon up to personal preference. Seal with a cork. Shake vigorously.
This is pastiche done well. Deeper narrative than it may seem and 2 hours that in my opinion were put to good use. I am just a tad sad that “Love Potion #9” wasn’t used at all in the soundtrack.
Beautiful movie but quite wooden. Fascinating ideas and ideas about liberation and feminism but not all of them pay off.
Still a fun movie with its own power.
surprised when i found out that this movie came out in 2016 bc the cinematography looks like something that came out in the 60s anyway love the movie and samantha robinson really radiated the gay energy to me... (laughs)
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