ADDED TO 'GREATEST FAVORITES': Love Streams (1984)

Directed by John Cassavetes

While commuting about the business of our daily lives, we are sometimes confronted by a sect of society that engage in bizarre, erratic, and volatile behavior in public and broad daylight without – more often than not, they go about these antics seemingly involuntarily. With no context, we never know how to react in these situations – we may look on with a degree of repulsion, we may even laugh a bit (not out of cruelty, but rather out of disbelief in what we are seeing). Nonetheless, we also observe in sadness of some degree, as we can only wonder what tragedy they come from and might have return home to.

John Cassavetes, the undisputable grandfather of independent cinema, dealt with these kinds of people almost exclusively in his body of directorial work in some form or another – whether it be the drunken mid-life ennui of Husbands, the blossoming of a sweet yet alarmingly unlikely romance in Minnie and Moskowitz, or mental illness and domestic familial chaos in A Woman Under the Influence. In my opinion, the latter is his masterpiece, but I didn’t realize the competition it had until recently revisiting Love Streams.

In his 1984 effort, Cassavetes continues his sympathetic yet unapologetic examination of emotionally troubled everyday people. His subject this time is the bond of two people defined by desperation yet deep empathy of each other’s emotional troubles. I stress “empathy”, as these are two people who have more than likely been through the exact same trials throughout their lives – they are brother and sister.

We are first introduced to Robert (Cassavetes), a writer living in the Hollywood Hills. Somewhat of a playboy, he spends much of his time in nightclubs. He claims his frequency of the nightlife is for research for his next novel, but I can’t help but feel that he’s using his title as a means of sounding more interesting – I don’t think we ever see him behind a typewriter or word processor once throughout the film.

Out of nowhere and without any foreknowledge, he is visited by Sarah (Gena Rowlands), his sister. The embrace they share is one that is eager for genuine human warmth, which their lives have been devoid of for some time. By this point, Love Streams is running around its hour mark. In that time, we’ve bounced back and forth between these two characters, not knowing how they’re related but captivated by them, if taken aback. Robert and Sarah are not so much incapable of loving somebody as much as they don’t know how to love. Their first embrace in the film is made all the more sweet and striking with all of this insight into their lives.

Sarah has just gotten out of a marriage, and the relationships that once filled a certain emptiness have opened those voids again, leaving her in a sort of catatonic state – it doesn’t help that her daughter wants to live with dad, and is quite blunt in her true feelings for her mother. Sarah’s doctor suggest she get away for a while, in some attempt to find herself. She goes to Europe, but quickly rushes to the phone booth to call her ex-husband. She doesn’t so much struggle with the separation as much as she simply cannot live without him.

Robert retreats into his vices, complete with clubs, booze, and endless company from prostitutes – when they line up for their checks, Robert hands them out as if they were candy. It is a world he is not so much trapped in as much as inertly comfortable in – even his home is reminiscent of the nightclubs he frequents, complete with a jukebox and a bar. At one point, a woman shows up with a young boy, Robert’s son from a previous relationship. He’s not mean to the boy; he just has no idea how to talk to the kid, and is clearly frustrated about that. He has the capability of taking it out on the boy, but seems to have enough good sense not to. That is until they sit at Robert’s bar, to which he pours the kid a beer. Now they’re talking.

As essential a filmmaker as Cassavetes is, I can admit from experience that he is most definitely an acquired taste. I have not seen a single film of his that clicked with me upon first viewing. For a scene to take its time is a remark often made (and a technique often commended) regarding independent cinema, but Cassavetes takes the notion of “taking your time” as far as it can possibly go. Scenes linger on and on, starting much before anything of significance occurs and staying long after the drama has erupted. Additionally, there is his visual style; always watching from a disconnected distance, as if we were neutral onlookers. Fairly recently, I watched Husbands; I didn’t care much for it, but I must admit that it has not left me one bit (a revisit is definitely imminent).

The more I watch Cassavetes’s work, though, the more this technique works too well for me, to the point where I feel like I’m intruding on somebody’s deeply personal life and I’m not allowed to leave (not to mention the utter unpredictability of the scenarios presented). To know what I’m talking about, please refer to the spaghetti breakfast scene in A Woman Under the Influence, not only my favorite example of Cassavetes’s technique, but one of the best scenes he’s ever directed.

All of these very techniques and other signature tropes are present in Love Streams, so there’s not much to comment on in that department, but it still works exceptionally well. Then again, the primary driving force of a film like this, naturally, are the performances. Once again, though, the usual cast are here: the always-captivating Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, and Cassavetes himself, who conveys his character through his very face alone – a man seemingly content, but deeply tormented.

What sets Love Streams apart, though, is its shred of hope, as uncertain and bittersweet as it is. These are characters who seemingly don’t know how to love, but no effort is required when it comes to each other. Upon initial exposure, Sarah’s clueless persistence for her ex-husband comes off as pathetic, but she never has a complete meltdown over it – she simply persists, still with a smile on her face. Perhaps one day she will meet an even better man, one who looks forward to her unconditional love. That said, I emphasize on bittersweet: it is still kind of painful to watch, but it’s also warming to see that at the very least, Robert and Sarah have each other (albeit platonically).

Some have suggested a film trilogy that Cassavetes made – albeit, inadvertently, as the chronology of the films’ releases don’t go in order. The start of a relationship that maybe shouldn’t be (Minnie and Moskowitz), the wounds of that relationship at their most painful (A Woman Under the Influence), and ultimately its boiling point and dissolution (Faces). With the subject matter of Love Streams in mind, I think there’s a strong enough argument to consider a tetralogy. The relationship between two once-lovers may have ended. No matter how rough of a finale their bond may have been, there is not only another world for these people to return to, but also other relationships to face. Cut to Love Streams.