Love Streams

source: Love Streams

This movie is a bit dated but it is really great. The acting by the two stars in this, Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes, is superb. Both of them may give their best performances in this. It is a dramatic movie and dramatic roles for both of them but there is also a lot of comedy and both of them delivery which is odd considering neither especially Cassavetes is known for doing any kind of comedy at all. I see there are awards won here and that is great I am frankly surprised there were no Oscars handed out to this, but the Oscars have long been against comedy films unless they are too huge to ignore. Check this movie out if you haven't seen it!

I hold £5 in my hand. That £5 belongs to the person who can explain to me what on Earth this film was supposed to be. (Apart from any good.) Worst film ever made?

Firstly, it's not easy to have the full understanding of the cinematographic universe that John Cassavetes has. To take a stage play by Ted Allan and to co-write a script and create something that looks like everything but something you can imagine on a theater stage. In "Opening Night", almost everything occurred on the stage; here we have cities, we have bars, we have houses and, of course, people…Real people. I don't know if it makes any good to write long reviews about every Cassavetes' film. He pursued a style, he conquered it and he maintained it while dealing with different topics. "Love Streams" is the story of two brothers, Robert and Sarah (Cassavetes and his eternal muse Gena Rowlands), and some days they spend together. Like in the best movies, there's room for the viewer to draw conclusions. When Sarah knocks at Robert's door, it appears that they haven't seen each other for a long time; but we don't really know. When Robert receives his son (Jakob Shaw), the house is full of women and it appears that he doesn't care about the kid, but we don't really know; we also never fully understand the nature of Robert's work as a writer, meaning that we know he writes novels but the house full of women and the process he uses to create remains widely unexplained. When Robert interviews a singer he thinks is beautiful, it appears that he cares about her, but we don't really know. All these situations are not as simple as they sound; they're constant subjects in the film's two and half hours duration time. The same happens with the Rowlands character; a woman who loves his family but seems to be loosing them. There's a scene in which Sarah, her daughter Debbie (Risa Blewitt) and her husband Jack (Seymour Cassel) sit together to review the divorce papers and suddenly the little girl stands up and tells her mother: "I want to go with daddy". Sarah reacts as an unstable woman would do, and there are many moments in the film where we see this characteristic (we even witness a short but honest visit to a psychiatrist). However, her problem is not completely detailed and we have to figure it out through the same process we use to study Robert and every other character. This is what Cassavetes does. He puts the viewer to work. He presents the characters, he lets us know what we could normally see with a camera (Al Ruban's beautiful and observing camera, in a very similar style to "Opening Night"): the outside. The rest? Well, it's real life and people deal with it as it comes. In "Love Streams" you also have to deal with it. Deal with the things the characters are dealing with. It's not like you've never been involved with a movie character.

Perhaps it's because I so recently saw "A Woman Under the Influence", but I found this movie predictable and self indulgent. It's pretty much the same movie, just shifted from middle-class Queens to too-much-money-and-no-responsibility California. Rowlands plays essentially the same character, with the same behaviors, and predictably unfortunate impacts on family life. In this movie, Cassavetes is also a very damaged character, but we get no hint of what caused either of them to be broken. We just watch them practicing their brokenness. This movie has the same joyless, unchanging lighting as "A Woman Under the Influence", the style of cinematography is the same. So for me it was too repetitive and predictable. (There is one funny spot where the camera crew is clearly visible, but I don't think that was intended, just a lack of editing). Not trying to take away from the very important contribution and influence of Cassavetes. But as a previous reviewer said, this one is for Cassavetes fans only.

The story opens in the middle of a situation that, without context, makes for total confusion. We are introduced to Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) and a gaggle of young women. Harmon is supposedly a writer who specializes in sexually-themed novels and is currently gathering data on urban night life. Odd that throughout the movie we never see Harmon writing. The first part of the movie is constructed from disconnected scenes. Sarah Lawson (Gena Rolands) is in a scene that is a divorce hearing trying to settle on parental rights. Sarah says she spends most of her time going to funerals and attending the sick. We never see her doing any of the things that she claims occupy her. The first half of the movie gets into understanding Robert and Sarah a little. The movie is half over before we know if there is any connection between Robert and Sarah. What was established in the first half was that Robert is a heavy drinker and a philandering ass. Sarah is seen as not playing with a full deck and at one point tells her ex-husband the she thinks she is almost not crazy. The movie takes a different turn when a woman shows up at Robert's door with an eight-year-old boy and tells him the boy is his son, and would he take care of him for a weekend. Just to indicate how far from how any real person would react, Robert's reaction to this appearance of his son, whom he has not seen since the kid's birth, is along the lines of "Sure, come on in." Some interest is developed in seeing how a wastrel like Robert reacts to having his son on board. He does boot out the young prostitutes from his house, but then encourages the kid to drink a beer and takes him to Las Vegas. After a trip to Europe where Sarah carries around a train car full of luggage, and has a stereotypical argument with a Frenchman who doesn't speak English, she returns to the U.S. and winds up at Robert's house where we finally learn that Robert and Sarah are siblings. Once Sarah and Robert are together the movie gradually abandons any attempt to stay on this side of reality and ultimately zooms off into the ozone. The signature scene that has Sarah bringing a menagerie of animals to Robert's house in a taxi (including a couple of horses, a goat, a duck, a parrot, and some chickens) struck me as just absurd. I suppose it was meant to be humorous, but it fell flat for me. Almost every scene struck me as lasting too long. What was to be gained by seeing Robert stagger drunkenly down a hotel hallway for about a minute? The aggregation of the overly long scenes makes for an overly long movie. There are some interesting scene compositions and lighting techniques and that is why I give this more than one star. This is my third Cassavetes movie and I think it will be my last. He is on a different wavelength from me.

I saw "Love Streams" in Madrid, this past summer in the "Filmoteca Nacional" inside the retrospective of Cassavetes and I was so impacted that I started to search this film, like a crazy. Cassavetes plays a very hard character making a depressed and empty of love man, a looser. And Gena also plays a wonderful character: his dizzy sister. Imprescindible, wonderful, winner with the "Golden Bear" and Cassavetes plays the best character i've ever seen in my life. Please, if you listen this film, see it and search films of Cassavetes. The best of Cassavetes is 1º: Love Streams, 2º: Husbands and 3º: Faces. His way of work allows him to transmit us a lot of feelings. Casssavetes knew that he would probably left a few months to die and he shots his own death and, making us to reflex into the human been. I cried a lot

This is not a movie for "film buffs"; nor is it an "art- house" movie. Rather, "Love Streams" is for those who may be moved by seeing human emotion depicted, on-screen, in the most direct, natural way imaginable.The performances by the two leads are dead- on. Cassavetes, as the drunken writer/ playboy {who hints at his mediocrity with the vapid questions he asks of the female subjects of his presumably forthcoming book}, and Rowlands as his love starved, too-sensitive-for-this-world sister,make you care for them as if they were your own family. And the sense of place- weirdly atmospheric, forlorn Los Angeles, is effective. Another praiseworthy brother-sister movie to consider would perhaps be "You Can Count on Me".

This is a late great work of a master director. It is one of the most original films I have ever seen, though Cassavetes work was mostly improvised and so always had a spontaneous and creative feel. Love Streams is so good because it is the work of a highly creative mind at the height of his talents. It is haunting in its depiction of an unusual brother and sister and their love for each other and for family (in the case of the sister played by the great Gena Rowlands in a beautiful, though at times scary, performance.) More than anything it is a study of the meaning of love itself. The look of the film and the editing alone make this one worth watching.

having seen and studied all of cassavete's films repeatedly i must say this is my favorite and one of his very best. there is such a wonderful array of emotions going on here and complex character development. we have his amazing camera, the stunning long takes of faces smiling staring really in the moment like no other acting i have ever seen on the big screen. each series of decisions by the protagonists gets us further involved in their struggles and triumphs. this film is very challenging for first time cassavetes' viewers, but well worth returning to year after year. cinema just doesn't get this good. if you like to think and want something really unique and special check this out.