Lana Del Rey gives up cocaine for witchcraft

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.

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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

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

this is what i imagine being on an acid trip at a renaissance fair would feel like

I literally felt like someone just threw me into a time machine to an 80s movie theater. I had to go back and double check the release date a couple times to be sure. This film does such a great job of paying ode to its predecessors, reminded me of a few Dario Argento movies.

cool motive, still murder

a bit on the nose at times but very endearing. i liked the costumes and the renaissance wedding. not to mention all those potions! the whole thing has a very 'handmade' feel to it.

if you told me this was a biopic of lana del rey's life I'd absolutely 10000% believe you

I still have no idea what is going on in this movie.

Unrated

I increasingly feel as if audiences and many critics largely misunderstand Biller's art (you can gather as much by reading online user comments and horrible audience behavior). While I think her films depend in part on camp for their effect, they are also earnest, and not genre 'parodies.' The closest contemporary to Biller would be someone like John Waters or Russ Meyer, and like their films, Biller's films are funny, but not in an ironic way. Modern audiences -obsessed with pointing their finger and laughing at everything old and dated and taboo, and yet also obsessed with irony-laden retro nostalgia that never seems to go away- have sadly conflated camp with parody, but they are *not* the same thing. It's a shame that this was wasted on the Landmark Theater chain hordes.

Well worth a watch... Visually gorgeous but the goofy acting all over this renders it a tricky one for me.