Nothing else this year beats “The Love Witch” for sheer grooviness. This retro movie is full of blue eye-shadow and painted unicorns and psychedelic herb drinks.
I am sure the audience will be limited for this unique item. But those people are going to be enormously gratified.
Writer-director Anna Biller aims for the look and feel of a 1971-era giallo, the Italian horror genre drenched in color and blood. But her update of the style has a sharp feminist sting in its tail.
We begin with Elaine (played by Samantha Robinson, who could have stepped out of a 1970s issue of Cosmopolitan magazine), leaving San Francisco after a “bad trip” and settling in quieter Eureka, California.
Luckily, Eureka has a thriving witch population. That’s what Elaine is: a witch, fond of casting spells and making potions.
But what she really seeks is love — the kind of love the Stepford Wives were famous for, submissive women serving strong, stoical men. And all that.
For some strange reason, she keeps getting disappointed, because her men turn out to be babies. And what a goofy lot they are — they resemble each other in their looks and their bone-headedness.
The actors look like they belong in the “I’m OK—You’re OK” decade (Gian Keys is especially good as a chiseled police detective). The story is set in the present, but Biller has an uncanny knack for period trappings — she designed the costumes and sets, some of which she created by hand.
Painstaking re-creation will only take you so far. Biller has more than that going for her: Although at times it plays like a parody, “The Love Witch” weaves in social commentary. When rumors spread about Elaine and she is attacked in a bar as patrons shout “Burn the witch!”, this is less about genre parody and more about rampant misogyny.
So even though it comes on like something wacky for horror freaks, “The Love Witch” really knows what it’s doing. And it’s hilariously funny, sometimes in an almost subliminal way.
At 120 minutes, it’s probably too much of a good thing. But by the time we arrive at a Renaissance Fair — excuse me, Fayre — replete with magickal maidens and knights a-jousting, I was willing to let this movie indulge itself.
“The Love Witch” (3½ stars)
On the surface, a pastiche of an Italian horror movie, circa 1971, about a present-day witch (Samantha Robinson) who has bad luck with men. But Anna Biller’s meticulously designed film is also a pointed (and wickedly funny) look at rampant misogyny.
Rating: Not rated; probably R for nudity, violence
Showing: SIFF Cinema Uptown
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