The Love Witch (2016): Lovers are Strangers, There’s Nothing to Discuss

“Lovers are strangers There’s nothing to discussHearts will be faithfulWhile the truth is told to someone else.”

(Michelle Gurevich, Lovers are Strangers)

A scene from the film.

I am always in the mood to watch one of my favourite films: The Love Witch (2016), directed by Anna Biller. The main character is a beautiful and seductive witch Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, whose long silky smooth black hair, dazzling outfits and vibrant eyeshadows catch the eye of many men in town, which is unfortunate for them because she isn’t just a witch – she is a love witch. Simultaneously, she is every man’s fantasy and his doom. Her victims just fall too much in love, and yes, ironically they die of too much love. Looking at Elaine, the way she walks the way she talks, it is easy to see why no man can resist her, there is a something magnetic about her, her figure oozes confidence and sensuality. After suffering from love in the past, Elaine was reborn as a witch and now she is determined to use that power to get what she wants from men, and not the other way around.

An interesting part of the film is an interlude in which Elaine and her new victim the officer Griff Meadows, oops, I mean her new love-interest, are out on a date, riding in the countryside and they stumble upon some kind of a Renaissance festival which was actually organised by her witch-friends. On the festival people are dressed in colourful Renaissance clothes and a cheerful music is in the air. Ladies are singing of love and wine is being poured in gold cups. A man dressed as jester sees the love couple and suggests that they make a mock-wedding, to celebrate love! Ahh how wonderful! And so Elaine and Griff are also dressed in Renaissance clothes and a little ceremony is performed after which Elaine feeds him some sweets and they gaze at each other infatuated, or so it seems.

While they are enjoying their sweet moments together, we get to hear their thoughts, first his, then hers and then his again, and what you will notice from the transcripts of the dialogues bellow is just how very different their thoughts are, on the same day, on the same matter: love. While Elaine thinks that the more she knows a man, the more she can love him, Griff things the more you know a woman the less enchanting she can be to you. Their smiles and sweet gazes were actually hiding completely different views on love and that made me think of the song by Michelle Gurevich quoted above and also on Edvard Munch’s painting “The Lonely Ones (Two People)” which expresses precisely this insurmountable difference between men and women. Munch’s two people are visually lonely, standing apart from each other and looking out into the distance, but Elaine and Griff are also lonely, though in a different way; lonely because they are not truly connected to each other and will never be. Their smiles and enchantment are just a transient illusion. Now, bellow are their thoughts and some pictures from the film:

(Officer Griff): I’m not in love. It’s not that I don’t have sentiment, it’s just that love is soft. You need guts in this business. I’ve seen guys get shot to death because they fell in love and got soft. I want an heir some day and I would need to have a wife, but love is something else. Man can get destroyed by things like that, it’s like he’s not even a man anymore. I never want to get that way.

(Elaine): When you really love him it’s like fireworks and nothing else matters. You love all the little quirks about him; the way he slurps his cereal, the way his mouth is a little crooked. Those details about him become your whole life. Something inside you opens up like a flower and you realise you have more love to give than you ever thought was possible. The more you know him, the more you love him.

Edvard Munch, The Lonely Ones (Two People), 1895

(Officer Griff): The more you get to know a woman, the less you can feel about her. At first she’s this incredible object of mystery who fulfills your wildest fantasies. Then she starts to reveal little flaws. Then after a while it just gets pretty hard to care. Feminine ideal only exists in a man’s mind. No woman could ever fulfill it. And sometimes when she tries to love you more, give you more, you feel like you’re suffocating, drowning in estrogen. The most awful feeling.

George Henry Boughton, The Waning Honeymoon, 1878