The Love Witch (2016)
Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her Gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, then picks up men and seduces them. However, her spells work too well, with often disastrous results.
Anna Biller, this films director, writer, editor and producer is a unique talent. Her feature debut Viva (2007) was quite superb in the way it blended sexploitation ala Russ Meyer into a 70's suburban housewife sexual revolution. However i didn't feel The Love Witch quite worked as well. Yes it's clearly a playful reworking of sixties and seventies Occult horror films with a heavy dose of gender politics thrown in, but it never quite hit the mark. The scenes of wicked witchery and Occult ceremony didn't really go far enough in comparison to the films it spoofed and although i often sported a smile i never once came close to laughing at the comedy aspects.
Samantha Robinson was excellent as the witch but the whole feminist aspect and metaphors felt very heavy handed and in the age of the #Metoo movement seemed so preachy in it's way of putting men in their place albeit in a playful way.
What can't be denied is Biller's style behind the camera. The film looks gorgeous, full of vivid colours in stunning Technicolor palettes. Yet even the setting came over as slightly confusing as it placed characters clearly from, as well as dressed, in the seventies into a contemporary small town America setting, meaning that unlike Viva it felt more like a nostalgic exercise in style over substance.
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