Looking for Love in all the wrong places, or a walk on metaphysical side
Stephen Keep Mills, a character actor for decades, now in his spry early 70s, makes his feature directorial debut with this tres meta contemplation about love, desire and the actualization of. Shot in stark black and white, Mills’s satire “Love is Not Love” rambles through the streets of New York as we drop in on dicey shards of dialogue ranging from the weird, “He wants to lick my arm pit,” to the provocative, “I could love more than one man at the same time. Even the same day, no problem!” and as one might expect, the sophomoric, “Dude, jacking off is not cardio.”
Yes, Mills is looking to give us a kick in shins and he does so effectively until we settle in with Frank (Mills) our protagonist, a silver maned lion with sad eyes, well past his prime and no longer king of a pride. We follow him along somberly as he lags behind two Irish construction workers debating the merits of women and Thomas Mallory’s seminal work, “Tristan and Isolde.” Frank seems invisible to the two like Bruno Gantz’s rueful angel in “Wings of Desire.” Interestingly too, “Love is Not Love” is rendered in a similar lush, matted black and white texture, a mood accentuating signature of Wim Wenders’s international masterpiece. Wenders shot as much of his 1987 film on location as the East Germans would allow him (Germany was not united at the time and shooting scenes at the Berlin Wall was denied and required sets). Mills on the other hand, shot his New York story on a sound stage in Los Angeles using old rear-screen projection for the backdrop imagery that for all its antiquated gimmickry provides tremendous field of depth and virtuosity. The lo-fi effect’s not only impressive, it’s aesthetically mesmerizing. Continue reading
The pursuit of Eden (in the fictional town of Arkham, which Lovecraft situated in our fair state and used often in his tales, though the film’s not shot here) doesn’t last long. Nathan’s attempt at growing tomatoes isn’t going so well – he’s a Gardner who can’t garden – though his alpaca endeavor seems to be doing marginally better. Then there’s Nathan’s wife, Theresa (Joely Richardson) who’s wildly unhappy with the spotty Wi-Fi and can’t work, while their daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) practices Wiccan rituals in the woods.Rounding out the nuclear-plus clan are big brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) who gets stoned while tending to the woolly creatures in the barn and the youngest, little Jack (Julian Hilliard), something ofmama’s boy who becomes drawn to the voices he hears in the old well out front.
John’s old life rages outside his front door. First, a gold-toothed gang banger runs over John’s dog – then threatens to shoot him because the dog gets blood all over his Escalade. Next, a den of gangsters who all don white jumpsuits (they’re Devo ridiculous, and there’s no perceivable purpose other than to make them easier to pick off) gets wiped out. Those behind it are two illegal immigrants there to free their Latina kindred, enslaved ostensibly for sex trade. One of the girls (Jamila Velazquez) ends up hiding under John Henry’s house and is later granted sanctuary. John can’t speak a lick of Spanish, but his loquacious, wheelchair-bound father (scene stealer Ken Foree) can, providing the communication bridge and the film with a meted current of comedy (Grady from “Sanford and Son” would not be a stretch). “Berta” is later joined by her brother Emilio (Joseph Julian Soria), one of the two behind the trigger in that shoot-up. “How many did you kill?” John asks. The answer is seven, and that’s the number Hell (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) will require to even the score. You know where this is going, sledgehammer and all.
