Love Streams

LOVE STREAMS         A                  

USA  (141 mi)  1984  d:  John Cassavetes

I’ve never seen an exploding helicopter.  I’ve never seen anyone go and blow somebody’s head off.  So why should I make films about them?  But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I’ve seen people withdraw, I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself done all these things.  So I can understand them...What we are saying is so gentle.  It’s gentleness.  We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.

—John Cassavetes   

Very few great artists, other than those named Mozart or Beethoven, save what is arguably their greatest creation for their last and final work, where a gaunt Cassavetes makes his last great film, written immediately after playing in Paul Mazursky’s film, TEMPEST (1982), filmed after he had already begun to be ill with liver damage.  LOVE STREAMS is Cassavetes’ Prospero, a farewell to his art, using dozens of references from his earlier films.  Like Faces (1968), all the interiors are filmed in the actual Cassavetes household, adding a documentary element of family photos and portraits lining the walls, interestingly containing no hand-held camera work, a staple in nearly all his earlier films, yet this may be his most intimate film.  Unlike most married couples that strive for a sense of balance and security, Cassavetes and Rowlands continued to struggle and evolve creatively directly in front of the camera during the course of their lives, an outrageously courageous and highly original form of personal expression, with Cassavetes waving goodbye to Gena Rowlands, and goodbye to the audience in the final shot.  With it, a career of risk taking comes to a climax in this rich, original, emotionally immense film about a brother who cannot love and a sister who loves too much.  The film is adapted from a series of three plays called Three Plays of Love and Hate, with Cassavetes writing the initial segment Knives, The Third Day Comes was written by Ted Allan, while the third Love Streams was supposedly co-written by Cassavetes and Ted Allan, though according to Allan it was almost all the work of Cassavetes, though both are credited with the screenplay.  Cassavetes characters insist upon their relevance, they demand to be heard, even when they don't have a clue what they're about to say, like the befuddled Rowlands who loses her daughter in the opening divorce proceedings, something inconceivable to her, as no one could love her more. But she can't find the words and her loss is immeasurable, so she spends the rest of the film trying to fill the empty void from that missing love.

Initially the film follows the separate lives of Robert and Sarah, Cassavetes and Rowlands, parallel lives of loneliness and loss, where Sarah loses her 13-year old daughter in a divorce, losing her companionship and love, trying to introduce love into the legal proceedings, but there’s simply no place for it.  Looking largely disheveled for the first half of the picture, Sarah is a natural extension of Mabel from A Woman Under the Influence (1974), a hyper-emotive woman who tends to get carried away with herself, growing deliriously happy or utterly despondent.  Referred to a psychiatrist, she attempts to explain to him, “Love is a stream.  It’s continuous.  It does not stop,” to which he replies, “It does stop,” but she insists otherwise, which is the heart of her personality, driven to be liked and appreciated, refusing to accept the middle ground of mediocrity.  Recommending that she take a trip to Europe and meet people, the film turns comically hilarious when we see the mountainous pile of luggage she drags behind.  Robert lives in a dream house on top of a Hollywood hill reachable only by a steep, winding incline making a successful living writing sex books about women.  We see him visit a gay nightclub picking up Diahnne Abbott after hearing the club’s singer doing a sultry rendition of “Kinky Reggae” Love streams - kinky reggae - YouTube (2:10).  Robert never sleeps alone, filling his house with beautiful young bimbos, where sex is all that is real.  Life is one long champagne party of women and sex, where there are literally several carfuls of call girls who spend the weekend, most of the time amusing themselves however they wish, as only one or two are ever with Robert, who occasionally takes the time to get to know them, actually asking probing questions which are beyond their years.       

In something of a surprise, mixing up the drunken revelry is an 8-year old kid Albie (Jakob Shaw) arriving on his doorstep, who turns out to be a son he never knew existed, whose mother says she’ll come back for him the next day.  Needless to say, Albie is terrified at the drinking and lewd behavior going on, so Robert clears the house of everyone else while the two get acquainted, ridiculously plying him with beer, offering him the fatherly advice that by the time he’s 14 he should hitchhike across the country and discover “real” people, “not these guys out here with their suits and ties, but real men.”  What distinguishes this film is the heavy mix of humor along with the depth of realism and warmth of the characters.  What do you do when you’re finally alone with a newly discovered son?  Take him to Vegas, obviously, where you go out partying all night leaving him alone in a hotel room, basically quivering in fright.  But before they leave, Sarah is greeted affectionately on Robert’s doorstep with her boatload of luggage that arrives in two cabs.  There’s a wonderfully extended ambiguity about their relationship, as we don’t discover the truth until about 90 minutes into the film.  Needless to say, the Vegas trip is a disaster, culminating in what could almost be described as spectacle, which is so bizarre in its own uncompromising way that Robert’s most embarrassing moment turns into something poignant and perversely comedic at the same time.

One of the more beautiful sequences involves Robert’s date with Diahnne Abbott’s mother Margaret, repaying earlier kindness, where they dance and drink champagne in her living room, where she’s treated like a queen to the music of Jack Sheldon singing “Almost in Love With You,” Love Streams 1984 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With You") YouTube (2:53), a Bo Harwood song also heard playing in an early bar sequence featuring the suave and debonair Ben Gazarra as Cosmo Vittelli in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), given a completely different texture, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - 1976 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With You") YouTube (2:10), but Cosmo similarly flirts with his girl friend Rachel’s (Azizi Johari) mother, where in each instance the mother used is the real life mother.  Returning home to a quieter, darker house, Cassavetes gently tells Rowlands, “Life is a series of suicides, divorces, broken promises, children smashed, whatever,” which is not in any way meant to be downbeat or maudlin, but simply an acceptance of reality.  From that, Sarah gets the idea to go bowling dressed in a classy black sequined dress and heels, where her response to the desk clerk’s “How are you?” is simply classic, as she’s bound and determined to give the man an honest answer, most of which is simply contorted facial expressions searching for the truth.  Of course, she’s a sensation wearing no shoes on lane 13, meeting Ken (John Roselius), returning home with renewed exuberance, where the two of them sit down and discuss the idea of love as art.  Sarah, however, refuses to abandon her romantic dreams about love, and in a brilliant conversational climax, defends her ex-husband, who no longer loves her and is giving her nothing but grief, telling Robert, “We’re talking about a man who put food on the table, who held my hand in the hospital, who cried when his baby was born.  Where were you?” 

Sarah’s way of providing balance to their lives is returning in a cab one afternoon with two miniature horses, a goat, a parrot, chickens, a duck, and a dog named Jim, but swoons in a spell when Robert doesn’t seem to appreciate the gesture.  Feeling miserable and disconsolate, barely able to move, Sarah has two extraordinary dream sequences while a storm rages outside and Robert, the Ancient Mariner, lovingly gathers up all the animals, providing them a shelter from the storm.  The first dream is one of Rowlands’ greatest scenes, tragically obsessed with the idea of making her daughter and ex-husband happy, she performs a burlesque comedy routine, trying every cheap vaudeville gag, fake mustard and ketchup, water spurting out of flowers and pens, fake eyeballs on springs, funny glasses, but gets nothing, despite the fact she is simply sensational, she gets no reaction from either one of them.  Her second dream is more surreal, LOVE STREAMS de John Cassavetes - Extrait - Le reve merveilleux de Sarah (Gena Rowlands) YouTube (4:58), an intriguing Stephen Sondheim style song staged like something out of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979), a small autobiographical operetta where her daughter’s feelings are being tugged back and forth between the mother and father, with Sarah on one side of the stage and her husband on the other, the spotlight shines on Sarah in a haunting, classical image of beauty and motherly love, where her daughter is seen as one of the dancing Degas ballet girls. 

Meanwhile, Cassavetes comically gathering all the animals is a bit like Rowlands’ earlier luggage scenes, where they are carrying their emotional baggage like an added weight on their shoulders.  Cassavetes, however, has the presence of mind to use the back door for comedy, so reminiscent of WC Fields’ “Not a fit night out for man or beast” in 1933 The Fatal Glass Of Beer (W. C. Fields) - YouTube (18:32), as each time they open it to the raging storm outside, Robert stumbles in out of the deluge with another animal.  Despite the howling storm, Sarah resolves to make something of her life right then and there, claiming sudden family clarity, not waiting another moment, while Robert urges her to never go back to any man that doesn’t love her and to stay and live with him.  But to the music of Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh’s “Where Are You” MILDRED BAILEY - Where Are You (1937) - YouTube  (3:15), “Must I go on pretending, where is that happy ending, where are you?” Rowlands is whisked away in a cab as Robert waves goodbye to his sister, framed in a windowsill, his image distorted by the rain.  Of  interest, there is no trace of a play in this film, arguably Cassavetes’ best and most accessible film, no dialogue driven moments, instead the occasional improvisational bursts offer needed energy to Cassavetes’ free-wheeling style, briskly moving between sequences where both Cassavetes and Rowlands offer such rare emotional authenticity, creating a cinematic farewell that will forever be beautiful and heartbreaking.  

Kiss Me, Stupid

KISS ME, STUPID         A-               

USA  (126 mi)  1964  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

Utter tastelessness was never funnier, where this film opens with Dean Martin at the Sands Resort doing his closing night shtick at Las Vegas, singing “S’Wonderful” in between statuesque showgirls and a host of bad jokes, which, if truth be told, are the mainstay of comedy.  How else could the nation survive Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, or Flipper, all among the most watched TV shows of the era when this film was made.  Nonetheless, the film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency (perhaps the biggest joke of all, especially looking back from the present era where the Catholic Church is embroiled in their own *indecent* sex scandal, covering up decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, effectively eliminating any new order of priests coming out of the United States) and dismissed as too lewd and crude by most critics over the Christmas holiday release.  While adultery could be tolerated by the public in The Apartment (1961), winner of 5 Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture largely because the immoral offender was portrayed as such a sleazeball, it’s harder to justify adultery from a happily married couple in small town America, even if that’s part of the joke, as the film is really a bedroom farce about fidelity in love and marriage.  In comedy timing is everything, and this film was released just a year after the JFK Kennedy assassination, with a nation obsessed and still reeling from the larger implications of what happened, who’s behind it, and who’s running the country?  As a result, this film tends to get lost in the Billy Wilder pantheon of great movies, though it has to be one of his funniest films, where the double and triple entendre quality of the jokes ranks with the Marx Brothers.  Wilder's film treats vulgarity with the same in-your-face brashness as One, Two, Three  (1961), something few other directors could have even attempted, hardly immoral or smutty, where this is really fairly benign and no worse than other pictures.  Vastly underrated, what is perhaps most surprising, and may have been lost on initial audiences, is Wilder attempted to write a genuine sex comedy about a mainstream, small town marriage that was more about what held the couple together in marriage than what kept them apart, brilliantly using a spoof on Dean Martin as a Rat Pack swinger (Dean Martin And The Rat Pack) in an attempt to expose America’s love of celebrity as little more than sexual hypocrisy, meant to heighten the suspense and raise the salacious level of comic expectations, but then throws in a heavy dose of reality like a cold shower, where the couple’s real feelings are exposed by actually downplaying the adulterous sex angle.  Underneath it all, filled with a musical stream of Gershwin tunes, the film has a heart. 

Martin’s lecherous lounge act is clearly a parody of his celebrity, always seen with a drink in his hand, suggesting young showgirls are all clamoring to sleep with him, where keeping up with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in the Rat Pack is one long unending party of drinks and wild girls, where what Martin does really well is throw out WC Fields style one-liners written by professional joke writers, giving his character a sense of suave sophistication.  Wilder simply uses what he does in his act and places it in a completely off-the-wall and absurd setting, placing Dino away from the bright lights and applause of Vegas, instead plagued with car trouble, driving his own rare 1957 Dual Ghia convertible (only 100 were built) that gets stuck in the tiny town of Climax, Nevada, where not much of anything ever happens.  What’s a swinger to do?  But really he’s been tricked by a couple of locals, piano instructor Orville J. Spooner, everyman Ray Walston from My Favorite Martian, a replacement for Peter Sellers who suffered a heart attack during the first few weeks of shooting, and a somewhat oafish but overeager car mechanic Barney, Cliff Osmond.  The two write songs in their spare time, sending them away to various singers and publishers, but hear nothing back.  Wilder wanted the songs to be awful, so awful they would be hilarious, so he asked Ira Gershwin if he and his brother George had ever written any real clunkers?  Out of the files of shame come the unheard of Gershwin standards, “I’m a Poached Egg,” or “I’m Taking Mom to the Junior Prom Because She’s a Better Twister Than My Sister.”  Dino’s arrival to Barney’s gas station appears heaven sent, so he hatches a plot to remove the fuel valve from his car to give the impression of serious car trouble, explaining it’s an overnight fix, but he can conveniently stay with Orville across the street, who has the entire evening to push their songs, hoping this is a surefire way to get rich quick.  But because of his reputation as a womanizer, the obsessively jealous Orville doesn’t want Dino around his wife Zelda, Felicia Farr, so he intentionally picks a fight to get her out of the house, forcing her to spend the night with her mother while Barney picks up a girl from the Belly-Button Club just outside of town, where the neon sign outside reads “Drop In and Get Lost.”  But not just any girl, it turns out to be Polly the Pistol, Kim Novak, who literally steals the show, a part-time hooker who has a trailer behind the club.  Her job for the evening is to pretend to be Mrs. Orville Spooner and keep Dino and his constantly prowling fingers entertained, hoping he’ll buy a few songs along the way. 

The plot thickens.  While we get a taste of Orville playing “Sophia” at the piano, where the chorus returns over and over again like a bad dream, Dino is positively smitten with Polly and the so-called “Western hospitality” where over dinner with Chianti, Orville all but pushes her in Dino’s direction—anything to show him a good time.  Delighted with the turn of events, drinking Chianti out of her shoes, Dino has his hands full.  But refusing to be pawed, Polly shows unexpected outrage, “What right has he got to treat your wife like that?”  Polly is no fool and is really touched by the romance sentiment in Orville’s songs, where she urges him to keep playing, completely changing the movie’s implications, as the hooker with the heart of gold is more interested in the long-term interests of the husband than the raunchy needs of the customer.  Meanwhile, in what feels like a parallel world, poor Zelda has to face her mother, who is nothing more than a sour-pussed old hag (Doro Merande) who can think of nothing but non-stop criticism of her no good husband and her destroyed marriage.  This verbal assault is hilariously cringe worthy, as she resembles the tyrannical ravings of the Wicked Witch of the East, which quickly sends her daughter back out the door in a return to her husband, where she sees through the window a lively and simply extraordinarily intimate dance between her husband and Polly (choreographed by Gene Kelly, who was just passing by the studio one afternoon), where they clearly seemed to be enjoying themselves, so what could she do?  The night of sex and sin has a way of overshadowing Wilder’s real intent, establishing sex as a business, where sex and commerce are interchangeable, but things go awry when Orville starts seeing Polly as a person, not a commodity, so when Dino actually likes one of the more romantic ballads, like “All the Livelong Day,” Orville refuses to sell it, standing up for his pretend wife in this ridiculously fast paced sex farce, suddenly taking all the fun out of it, where Orville instead turns on Dino as a cad for making inappropriate, lurid advancements on his wife.  “Whatever happened to Western hospitality?” he pleads as he’s being thrown out on his ass.  But not to worry, the film follows Zelda instead, who turns out to be more than a handful, getting plastered at the local watering hole, ending up in Polly’s trailer just to sleep it off, where Dino arrives shortly afterwards, steered by the bartender to the trailer where all the “action” is.  Having exchanged places with Polly, Zelda realizes what’s up and asks Dino to serenade her with a few choruses of her husband’s “Sophia.”  Adultery within the marriage has a redemptive quality here, as being with an “other” only reminds each one of who they’re really missing.  Love and romance wins out in the end, overshadowing all sins of the flesh, taking us all by storm with this wild little ride in the desert concocted by Billy Wilder.   

The Sitter

THE SITTER               C                    

USA  (81 mi)  2011  d:  David Gordon Green

One way to approach David Gordon Green’s descent away from art films and into the more lucrative Hollywood industry is to think of this movie as little more than an extended short, as basically this is a one idea film, all the things that could go wrong with a completely inept and unqualified babysitter, using a variation on WC Field’s contemptuous view of children theme and then attacking the audience with anarchistic set pieces that will either leave you laughing at the derisive nature of the beast or bolting from the theater in disgust.  If the idea is simply to provoke a reaction, then Green has likely succeeded, though this was probably more fun on the set than the finished product onscreen, likely the case in far too many comedies.  What’s missing here is a cohesive whole, as instead it’s something of a sprawling mess of various likely improvised ideas that never really come together.   

Rather than a just missed comedy, this may be a huge quasi experimental misstep that is amusing by just how far away from comedy this movie occasionally travels, reminiscent of the Macaulay Caulkin HOME ALONE (1990, 1992) series which was one extended misadventure filled with ludicrous set ups and sight gags that in themselves became ridiculous after awhile.  What this mostly resembles, however, are the Doctor Seuss children stories, where kids are left pretty much on their own with no discernable adult presence where they run amok creating havoc and mischief for a brief period before everything returns back to normal by the time their parents get home.  That’s pretty much the film, which includes the random screw ups of the adult sitter in charge, the man-child Jonah Hill as the clueless Noah.  It always helps if the kids can have mature moments when they act much older than their ages, allowing each, by the end, to benefit from the time spent with one other. 

From the outset, using his familiar cinematographer Tim Orr, Green loves to use inventive camera shots, from double to triple screen, superimposed imagery, slow mo and fast action sequences, and even a sideways cam, all a bit offsetting and disruptive from the comfort zone of the viewer, but also offering a taste of the world being viewed from a slightly different vantage point that has tilted askew.  While some may find stereotypes offensive, they are fairly prevalent in comedy sketches, and this film has a field day exuding the pleasures of exploitation flicks which are in the wheelhouse of this director who grew up with 70’s and 80's films.  Taking a riff on the American mainstream family portrayal, Green takes a look at living in the posh neighborhoods of the lily white suburbs with overly pampered and alienated kids, clueless parents who have their own sexual repressive and adulterous issues, where one parent routinely has to look away in order to maintain the high quality of life to which they’ve become accustomed, where morality is a smokescreen, something you purchase in order to impress others with instead of upholding any personal convictions. 

This is the backdrop of the story, where Noah, an aimless, overweight and unemployed twenty something who has amounted to nothing in life is still living at home with his single mother, where they both commiserate over the evils of his absent dad who has left them high and dry, now running a highly successful business yet still lags woefully behind on his alimony payments.  Noah routinely degrades himself for female companionship, where self-absorbed Marisa (Air Gaynor) allows him to pleasure her while keeping all other sexual contact off the table.  When his mom finally has a chance to go out and have an evening of her own, it’s nearly spoiled when the couple she’s going to a social event with loses their babysitter at the last moment, allowing Noah to fill in, where he’s interestingly introduced to three misfits, Slater (Max Records), the overmedicated kid who's pretty much afraid of all human contact, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), the adopted Central American child with a penchant for explosives and wearing cowboy boots with pajamas, and Blithe (Landry Bender), the reincarnation of Jonbenet Ramsey, an adorable young child with an eye on becoming a celebrity with a flair for gossip and the excessive use of sparkle make up. 

When Marisa calls from a party offering full sexual contact if he’ll score some coke and come pick her up, all bets are off on conventional babysitting as Noah stashes the kids in the back of the family minivan for a rollicking escapade on the town, where he has a few stops to make along the way, all of which explode in his face with things going wrong, including a hilarious trip to a warehouse filled with scantily clad male bodybuilders where a gay escort on roller skates (Sean Patrick Doyle) leads them inside to see Karl (Sam Rockwell), the coked up, out of control drug dealer (with his portrait on the wall) who wants everybody to be his friend, actually ranking them by number, where he’s continually challenged to make on the spot readjustments with each new person he meets.  Karl believes in manly hugs, loyalty and likeability, pointing guns at anyone who falls out of line, which is Noah when Rodrigo makes off with Karl’s personal stash.  Turning into something of a spirited, free wheeling romp, where blacksploitation action, gangsta rap, and a gorgeous black girl friend Roxanne (Kylie Bunbury) literally drop out of the sky offering him a reprieve from the mediocrity of life in the suburbs.  A lighthearted story about being true to yourself, it’s a minor riff on middle class complacency, much of which feels generic and is not so much about anything as expressing a message of creating your own unique style of living, where it’s best not to take anyone or anything for granted. While enjoyable at times, it’s also completely forgettable.