The Love Witch

The Love Witch is the latest offering by writer-producer-director Anna Biller, a subversive, stylish homage to melodramatic Technicolor witchy horror movies of the 1960s.
*

Samantha Robinson plays Elaine, a woman seemingly stuck in the Sixties.  Abused as a child, and initiated into a coven of witches, she uses her sexuality and magick to make a series of men fall in love with her.  Cold, manipulative, narcissistic, yet needy for love as she understands it, she winds up destroying each of her victims.
* 

The men in this movie are depicted as shallow, salivating, and sex-driven.  Even Griff (Gian Keys), the traffic-cop turned detective investigating one of Elaine’s murders, seems easily taken in by her wiles against his better instincts.  Elaine and her coven leaders express the opinion that women’s sexuality is the source of their power over men, and should be celebrated as such. In one scene, they even break the fourth wall to lecture the audience directly.
*

Laura Waddell plays Trish, Elaine’s friend, and landlady of her gothic Victorian house. Convinced to be more like Elaine, in an almost touching scene, she doffs her conservative pantsuit and dolls herself up in Elaine’s makeup, lingerie, and wig before discovering that her husband was another of her hapless victims.
*

It’s a clever tongue-in-cheek parody (if parody it is), and the art direction and costuming is spot-on iconic.  Floppy hats and flouncy pink dresses in the tea room scenes contrast with the fetish wear and seamed stockings that Elaine prefers. She is first shown driving a vintage red Mustang convertible, and one of her victims drives a gold Impala from the late ‘60s, in a world where other characters drive contemporary vehicles. However, it’s a shame that the witchcraft shown in this movie is taken straight from the Farrars’ Witches’ Bible.  Portions of an initiation ritual, the Great Rite, the Charge of the Goddess, skyclad dancing to the Witches’ Rune, the five-fold kiss – all part of the beautiful literature of the Craft – are juxtaposed with the clever, ugly cynicism of the rest of the movie.  It’s easy to see why this can be considered sacrilegious. Given Elaine’s amorality, when a bar crowd turns into the inevitable angry mob shouting, “Burn the witch!” you’re not sure whether to root for them or not. Only for a moment, during a solstice Oak King/Holly King battle and handfasting done in the context of a Renaissance Fair conducted by the coven, can you sense some of the beauty of the Craft.
*

It’s hard to tell whether Biller intended this to be an homage or parody, and even whether she supports or hates witchcraft, and why. Part cautionary tale against love spells, part narcissistic, misanthropic feminism, Biller gives us a Witch as mentally-ill serial killer. I found myself cringing throughout, but then, I’m only a man.  Two-and-a-half broomsticks out of five.