![]() ![]() Elaine thinks of herself as “just a little girl dreaming of being carried off on a white horse,” but she’s matured into a self-obsessed monster - one of the most exciting movie monsters I’ve ever seen. And their faces… Biller’s greatest talent may ultimately be for casting - from the angular actor who plays Elaine’s dead ex-husband (his name is Stephen Wozniak) to the scraggly, super-thirsty professor type (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) who cries himself to death after a night of passion with Elaine, every single person who appears on screen helps strengthen the uneasy aura that the film creates.Īnd Robinson leads the way, taking us deep into the dark heart of a woman who’s always just wanted men to look at her like she’s a real person, but has been denied that basic respect for so long that simply meeting their gaze has reduced her into something less. But the degree of consistency on display here is only possible because every department is on the same page, from the marvelously florid costumes (which Biller designed herself) to the performances of each supporting actor, all of whom is attuned to the weirdo vibes the movie is putting out there. Biller doesn’t mine her premise for all the drama that it has to offer, she never quite solves the mystery of what to do with a sociopathic heroine who (by definition) is resistant to change, but she has no trouble stretching the story’s gender politics in continually fascinating directions or sustaining its woozy vibe until the bitter end.īiller shows an incredible command of tone and texture, the committed sensuality of her production design allowing her to thread the needle between camp and classicism. Paced like a bad trip, “The Love Witch” boils through much of its testing two-hour runtime without much of a plot to speak of - Elaine meets and then murders a series of men, eventually drawing the attention of a strapping, square-jawed detective (Gian Keys). READ MORE: Watch ‘The Love Witch’ Star Samantha Robinson Warn Moviegoers Not To Talk During The Film And she won’t let anyone stand in her way: Not her friends, not the string of random men who have the bad luck of crossing her path, buddies, not even the frequently nude Satanists who perform all sorts of queasy rituals in the woods outside of town. She’s a fully “constructed” female who’s singleminded in her pursuit of love, a woman who’s become convinced that whittling herself down to a doll of slavish devotion is the only way to win her share. ![]() “Just a pretty woman to take care of them.” As much a product of misogyny and the male gaze as the killer alien Scarlett Johansson played in “Under the Skin,” Elaine is a symbol of screaming hot sex who rages at the idea that men won’t see her as anything more. “What do you men want?” she asks rhetorically. Elaine - a beautiful woman who probably doesn’t need to brew fatally effective love potions out of piss, nails, and period blood in order to make men fall for her - is wracked between the fairy tale fantasy of medieval gender roles and the dehumanizing reality of actually living by them. “You sound as if you’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy,” the friend replies. “Giving men sex is a way of unlocking their love potential,” she flatly tells a married friend over tea in pink Victorian funhouse. A serial killer who thinks of herself as the star of a rom-com, Elaine is both empathetic and deeply deranged (a line that Robinson walks with wide-eyed glee), but it doesn’t take long to understand the cause and depth of her psychosis.
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