The Love Witch

 

Like Hitchcock? Love horror? Fan of feminism? Then Anna Biller’s at once outrageously funny and deadly serious The Love Witch is the film for you. Released in 2016 and set in California in what might be termed a hazy present, The Love Witch is, nevertheless, drenched in anachronism: from the gaudy ‘60s make-up practically plastered to the faces of the characters, to the peculiar traces of Pagan Witchcraft that crop in many scenes, to the more oblique allusions to 1930s' Hollywood cinema that cling, in particular, to the central character, a beautiful yet deadly witch named Elaine. Biller has, for example, often compared The Love Witch to Baby Face, a 1933 drama starring Barbara Stanwyck as an attractive manhunter who uses sex to advance her social and financial status. Just like Elaine.

Sound like a crazy mash-up of genres? That’s because it is! And things get even more complicated once we consider how The Love Witch represents the relationship between the face and the mind. For example, in a 2017 interview with the Guardian, Biller described her film as ‘an exploration of what happens when you “ask what’s inside the mind of a female stereotype”’ – with the answer apparently being provided in the interior monologues that are scattered throughout the film, articulated by Elaine. But what is even more interesting about Elaine is that at no point in the film do her expressions appear to match these monologues, and instead what the spectator is presented with, consistently and unequivocally, is the shiny surface of her expressionless face. In short, a mask.

Want to know more?

Read about The Love Witch here

Watch the trailer here.

​