The Love WitchLove often requires a degree of sacrifice, but neophyte witch Elaine (Samantha Robinson) takes the concept to heart--literally. Elaine is a young, beautiful divorcee, who moves to a rural community from San Francisco as part of her process to escape her past, which included a nervous breakdown and the death of her ex-husband, Jerry (Stephen Wozniak). Elaine has cultivated her confidence by embracing her religion of witchcraft, with a focus in love magic, crucial after her rejection by Jerry. After setting up shop, she proceeds to seduce various men, often with lethal results.
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The Love Witch is an independent film by Anna Biller that, like the film's protagonist, defies easy classification. The film is described as a "horror-thriller" on the merits that it focuses extensively on witchcraft, sexuality, and the subsequent deaths of the men who Elaine seduces. However, although this is a part of the film, the majority of The Love Witch focuses on Elaine's episodes of seeking love--or at least her interpretation of it--and the unfortunate miscalculations that result from her efforts. Essentially, The Love Witch has more in common with the melodramas of the Fifties or Sixties, with a heavy dose of Wicca--Douglas Sirk by way of Aleister Crowley. The overwhelming focus on emotions--specifically love--reinforces this, along with the look of The Love Witch. Stylistic elements like hard lighting and rear projected imagery--such as when Elaine sojourns from San Francisco in her vintage, bright red Ford Mustang--recall the appearance of Technicolor films from decades past, as do the costumes and set design. The film is cited as being one of the last films to use 35mm film as raw stock, a kind of ritual to honor this fading form of filmmaking--fitting for a film about rituals. The constant and multitudinous amount of background information about witches and witchcraft throughout history also recalls the classic silent horror film, Häxan. The idea of a movie presenting itself as a kind of time capsule for a genre film is not unusual, even for the publisher of The Love Witch, Oscilloscope Laboratories. In 2009, they published Ti West's The House of the Devil, which paid homage to 1970s and early 1980s era horror films. Interestingly, The Love Witch is not actually set in the past; modern elements peek through occasionally, like cars or cell phones, but are rare. The result is that the film seems to exist in a kind of Limbo-like state, and the retro look of Elaine work more on a metaphorical level. For instance, Elaine's fixation on the past and her rejection by Jerry has dominated her subconscious, and now she is fixated on love, like it is some kind of higher ideal. Elaine is a walking Venus, an embodiment of amorousness and sexuality, who is able to gaze into the eyes of a man she has never met before and have him eating out of the palm of her hand. Her uniform to seduce and destroy her prey includes knee-high leather boots, long hair extensions, and a cerulean shade of eyeshadow. Her appearance is unquestionably designed to wear down the defenses of her prey, and her sexy witch persona wouldn't be out of place in the exploitation films of Russ Meyer. On the other hand, The Love Witch is clearly a subversion of this genre, by presenting Elaine's dominant personality--coyly camouflaged as submissive--as a beacon of female empowerment and feminism.
The world of The Love Witch exists as a parody of reality; with rare exceptions, characters are portrayed as caricatures, painted in broad strokes, with Elaine being the standout exception. Even the unnatural dialogue carries a sensation of being akin to trance-like speech, spellbound utterances under hypnosis. Elaine is like someone who has been consigned to this strange world, and has been made a citizen of it following her nervous breakdown briefly mentioned in the beginning of the film. Elaine's obsession with love is really a compulsion, forcing her to try to obtain something she felt was never within her grasp until she discovered the spells and alchemy entrusted to her by her matron, Barbara (Jennifer Ingrum), and her coven companion, Gahan (Jared Sanford). But as Trish (Laura Waddell), her new friend and interior designer observes when she describes her transformation and proclaimed reclamation, it sounds as though she had "joined a cult". There isn't the overt sense that Elaine sets out to destroy the men she seduces, but that is the result of her efforts all the same. The men she loves--and in the case of Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) at least, she drugs--die from "too much love", their hearts metaphorically spilling out all over. When Elaine watches men like Wayne or even Trish's own husband, Richard (Robert Seeley), turn into blubbering fools, begging for her love again, she reacts with disgust--interestingly, she likens them to "weak women". What's key about this response is that it suggests that Elaine is using her sorcery as both a means to revenge herself against men and also punish herself for being "womanly" (or in this context, weak) in the past. She blames herself for letting Jerry get away by not being "stronger"; at the same time, the voice of her father haunts her memory and cruelly criticizes her--Elaine is clearly conflicted in her motivations. Another telling scene comes near the end when Elaine is confronted by Griff (Gian Keys), a local detective and "manly man" who is apparently able to resist her seductiveness, and he tries to arrest her. She protests, claiming that he is being bigoted because she is a witch, making broad declarations about her religion to him for the second time. What makes this interesting is that it depicts Elaine as identifying as a witch as an excuse to justify her vengeance against men. Her indignation recalls an earlier scene in the burlesque club, where Barbara and Gahan lecture her with an overly lengthy exposition about the history of witchcraft, filled with the same protestations she later parrots to Griff. Essentially, this earlier scene is where Elaine is coached to defend herself against those who would challenge witchcraft as a religion, and she tries to portray herself as a true believer. Viewing The Love Witch as a psychological character study of Elaine also helps to shirk what would otherwise come across as a heavy-handed barrage of alternative-religion moralizing. The irony of Elaine's fascination with Griff is that she cannot affect him with her hexes, because--according to his inner monologue when they are part of a mock wedding at a Renaissance Faire--he doesn't believe in love. Essentially, this contradicts Elaine's true motivations in pursuing endless love, revealing them to be little more than a justification for her scorn, because she is clearly at her happiest when she is with someone who doesn't want true love at all.
Recommended for: Fans of a stylish satire of melodrama and camp, slyly juxtaposing pastels and Paganism to create a commentary about gender roles and sexuality. And the combination of obsessive love and witchcraft means that The Love Witch is the kind of movie you could watch for either Valentine's Day or Halloween--or even Walpurgis Night.
The world of The Love Witch exists as a parody of reality; with rare exceptions, characters are portrayed as caricatures, painted in broad strokes, with Elaine being the standout exception. Even the unnatural dialogue carries a sensation of being akin to trance-like speech, spellbound utterances under hypnosis. Elaine is like someone who has been consigned to this strange world, and has been made a citizen of it following her nervous breakdown briefly mentioned in the beginning of the film. Elaine's obsession with love is really a compulsion, forcing her to try to obtain something she felt was never within her grasp until she discovered the spells and alchemy entrusted to her by her matron, Barbara (Jennifer Ingrum), and her coven companion, Gahan (Jared Sanford). But as Trish (Laura Waddell), her new friend and interior designer observes when she describes her transformation and proclaimed reclamation, it sounds as though she had "joined a cult". There isn't the overt sense that Elaine sets out to destroy the men she seduces, but that is the result of her efforts all the same. The men she loves--and in the case of Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) at least, she drugs--die from "too much love", their hearts metaphorically spilling out all over. When Elaine watches men like Wayne or even Trish's own husband, Richard (Robert Seeley), turn into blubbering fools, begging for her love again, she reacts with disgust--interestingly, she likens them to "weak women". What's key about this response is that it suggests that Elaine is using her sorcery as both a means to revenge herself against men and also punish herself for being "womanly" (or in this context, weak) in the past. She blames herself for letting Jerry get away by not being "stronger"; at the same time, the voice of her father haunts her memory and cruelly criticizes her--Elaine is clearly conflicted in her motivations. Another telling scene comes near the end when Elaine is confronted by Griff (Gian Keys), a local detective and "manly man" who is apparently able to resist her seductiveness, and he tries to arrest her. She protests, claiming that he is being bigoted because she is a witch, making broad declarations about her religion to him for the second time. What makes this interesting is that it depicts Elaine as identifying as a witch as an excuse to justify her vengeance against men. Her indignation recalls an earlier scene in the burlesque club, where Barbara and Gahan lecture her with an overly lengthy exposition about the history of witchcraft, filled with the same protestations she later parrots to Griff. Essentially, this earlier scene is where Elaine is coached to defend herself against those who would challenge witchcraft as a religion, and she tries to portray herself as a true believer. Viewing The Love Witch as a psychological character study of Elaine also helps to shirk what would otherwise come across as a heavy-handed barrage of alternative-religion moralizing. The irony of Elaine's fascination with Griff is that she cannot affect him with her hexes, because--according to his inner monologue when they are part of a mock wedding at a Renaissance Faire--he doesn't believe in love. Essentially, this contradicts Elaine's true motivations in pursuing endless love, revealing them to be little more than a justification for her scorn, because she is clearly at her happiest when she is with someone who doesn't want true love at all.
Recommended for: Fans of a stylish satire of melodrama and camp, slyly juxtaposing pastels and Paganism to create a commentary about gender roles and sexuality. And the combination of obsessive love and witchcraft means that The Love Witch is the kind of movie you could watch for either Valentine's Day or Halloween--or even Walpurgis Night.