Not being mainstream helps: The American Film Institute has put together a top 100 Love Stories of all time compilation, and the list is indeed full of terrific  movies. Included are the likes of The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca and Now, Voyager. They are unusual – in that they don’t necessarily follow the star crossed lovers’ formula – but for a love story to be a true cult love story – it should really be modern. By this is meant NOT starring Meg Ryan, (with the one wonderful exception of When Harry Met Sally), Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz or any other Hollywood A-lister. The usual suspects. It isn’t that they are bad actresses – but they are always figuring in the sort of films to avoid unless you are a deeply insecure female with few erstwhile preoccupations.

It is not to be a Rom Com either. Nothing formulaic or starring that paragon of masculine self respect Matthew McConaughey: (really, him and Jenifer Aniston should get married in real life and be done with it). The usual Hollywood outing has to have the ‘will they won’t they irritating mid section which has now become predictable and boring. A cult love story would and should never in a million years look or feel like an episode of ‘Sex in the City’ – or ‘Friends.’ Really, any film that does – doesn’t know what it is talking about. ‘He’s Just Not That into You ’, is not a movie about real people with genuine emotional depth. It just spun a throwaway line form SITC into a film which was at best chewing gum for anyone happy with their shoe collection. Cult movie fans are not interested in who rings who and when. Or worse, care about the endless speculation (usually between women) pre-empting final connection between the female/male leads. God help those in that mind set: a tiresome business best kept in the pages of Cosmopolitan and not put on film. A cult love story movie has to be something that men and women would want to go see together, preferably where the boyfriend/husband/friend wouldn’t have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. Or feel like he has to for appeasement. There has to be something in it for them. Preferably all sorts of action – all of it full bloodied.

A love story with potential to cult status would have to have at its heart, protagonists that can convey the necessary confusion, joy, devotion and panic involved in the mad process we define as falling in love. Either that or have characters we like who fall for other characters we like within the confines of lives we can identify and sympathise with. Love stories need to be odd – as the whole business is odd, but wonderful. Pull off the odd but wonderful combo and the movie is a good way there. Four Weddings and a Funeral is a decent enough film and love story, but not odd sufficiently for cult status. A cult love story has to be without a heavy dose of schmaltz. This would automatically disallow Love Story with Ryan O’Neal/Ali McGraw, despite its title and 70’s nostalgia appeal. A lot of the older Hollywood outings fall down in this area as this was what the audience then required from such a film. The major Hollywood studios that produced them wanted certain emotional buttons pressed before the ultimate and predictable happy ending was reached. This is not the case today. The characters have to be dealing with the modern world and its challenges for it to be convincing, engaging and moving. And relevant to the viewer. The movies that have been chosen to best highlight the qualities necessary were made 1971 – 2006. There are one or two exceptions from the studio era 1929 – 1952, but not many. There was a big temptation to include Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), but felt that the main female lead (played by Shirley MacClaine) was too self destructive and depressing –to merit inclusion. It also is rather main steam and not full of the usual cult oddities despite having modern themes.

Odd characters and methods should drive in a cult love story – but not nasty intent. A lot of films that have passion, skewed motives and obsession are wrongly put in the category of love story and are given cult status because they are odd, sometimes brave and rather obscure. The Night Porter is definitely odd – but is ultimately too mean spirited to be a love story. The same is true of Bitter Moon, The Last Tango in Paris, In the Realm of the Senses, Sid & Nancy, Tom & Viv: in these stories the main leads are far too awful to each other to make the case convincing to be love. Empathy with the characters is made difficult. If possession, power games and cruelty are the main motives (which is certainly the case with Dangerous Liaisons- an unbelievably good film), the prospect of getting it on in a mutually happy way fails to ring true. Love stories should be without the prospect of damage – internal damage that is to the main leads. The opposite of this should be the driving force: redemption is key. Even if the characters are nasty to the external world (which is certainly true of Natural Born Killers) – this, in essence is somehow permissible if the story itself is about them and not what they do. This excludes say, Badlands and Bonnie & Clyde. Again, both good films, but really movies about murder, the ultimate brush with the law and subsequent restoration of moral order. Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde is more famous for its final sequence – which inspired Santino’s death in The Godfather, than for it’s qualities as a love story. In a cult love story, the central characters have to be redeemed by their love for one another and the all too human process to make the end result worth their journey – and ours. We need to feel happy that they have made the choice to be together.

The way that the characters deal with their external world is important: the stories of John & Yoko/Natural Born Killers – (Mallory and Mickey), and Harold and Maude are within the context of self contained relationships. They are not just stories about people in love, and how they get there, but how that is carried forward, dealt with and responded to. They (the couples), exist within a bubble and get disrupted and tested by the outside world. How they deal with the challenges tests their strengths and our ability to believe in them. In the case of NBK, it is expected that Mallory and Mickey are going to be kept apart. For John & Yoko, the test is how Yoko responds to the challenge of being blamed for the break-up of the most famous pop group in the world. When Harold and Maude fall in love, Harold tells those concerned in his immediate close circle and the responses are hilarious. Especially from the priest. Part and parcel of the success of the stories is the response of the main protagonists to deal with their circumstances and to triumph against any opposition and the odds against them in an admirable and believable way. This is certainly true of Lula and Sailor in Wild at Heart against the ongoing antagonism of Lula’s mother Marietta and the various pawns she uses to chase and kill Sailor. This element is rare in traditional love stories but is almost always true of love stories of cult status.

Ideally, the film should deploy the right lighting, camera angles, imagery and anything else at the director’s disposal that can hit the right buttons in conveying what the characters are thinking and feeling, and even better if the result manages to provide us with both a hybrid of the director’s style and a satisfying denouement. Modern cult movies are more likely to pull this off. Punch Drunk Love has been chosen for this reason: the lighting and use of colour exactly shows what is inside Barry Egan – the male lead. Wild at Heart not only is an engaging love story, but is unmistakably David Lynch. Hal Ashby very subtly, manages to incorporate the sentiment of doomed youth idiosyncratic of those coming of age during the Vietnam War in Harold and Maude. He (the director) belongs to that era and sentiment.

Music helps too. John & Yoko figures here as every stage of their courtship and developing relationship is given that extra slice of emotional credulity by backing it with an appropriate Beatles/John/Yoko number. Besides, Yoko Ono is odd enough by anyone’s margins to deserve inclusion, it may well be though that watching this movie would jump start interest in her music: as John rightly says in the movie, Yoko was New Wave long before New Wave, as a genre hit our collective attention span in the mid to late seventies. The music accompanying the film doesn’t have to be a catalogue of well chosen songs – but be sufficiently right to set the mood/tone/feeling of what is going on with the characters. Sometimes the music can evoke a sense of period – this is true of both John & Yoko and Harold and Maude. Cat Stevens provides the soundtrack for H&M – which is surely fitting for a film made in 1971. A couple of the songs in the film were written especially for it and were not available as recordings in their own right until 1984.

There are numerous movies that would fit happily within the criteria explained here: below are seven reviews of unconventional, modern love tales. All included films are worthy of cult love story status that fit snugly with the criteria thus explained. There are more that may yet be added: Chasing Amy, Two Girls and a Guy, The Truth about Cats and Dogs, Sea of Love, When Harry Met Sally, White Palace, The People vs. Larry Flint, Frida, Fever Pitch, Amelie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, are but some in a much longer list. For now though, go through these here – stick them in your DVD player back to back one rainy weekend. With or without that special someone.

Wild at Heart: David Lynch: 1990 127mins.

Main Protagonists: Nicholas Cage/Laura Dern.

‘You mark me the deepest’ – Lula to Sailor

This film is strange. Not as strange as Twin Peaks – the DL series that hit our screens soon after the release of W@H, but is nonetheless disturbing. It is a love story, inside a road movie, littered with the weird and wonderful characters one would expect to find in Lynch’s work. Cage (at his youthful, non-hammy finest) is Sailor Ripley – an ex con, Laura Dern (doing blonde and sultry very well) is Lula Fortune, the daughter of vengeful and very uptight Marietta.

Marietta is intent at keeping them apart – Sailor is not fit for her daughter, but was ‘fit’ enough for Diane Ladd (the woman playing Marietta – Laura Dern’s real life Mom) to proposition him in a toilet. She is rebuffed by Sailor. Marietta then calls upon a hit man to murder Sailor. In a gruesome act of violence – Sailor kills him and points to Marietta as the reason he has had to do this. He goes to jail. Lula waits and the rest of the film is devoted to the adventure Sailor and Lula have in getting away from her clutches once he is released.

The love that the main leads share transcends the rest of the film and its various themes and symbols. The scene that best shows this is whilst Lula is driving and mortified with the endless tales of death and moral carnage on the radio, Lula stops the car and screams to Sailor, ‘Sailor Ripley, you get me some music on that radio this instant – I mean it’ at which point Sailor duly obliges and they dance this kooky dance kicking into the air violently until they crash into a sensual and loving embrace. The music score changes to something at once more orchestrated and climactic. Whilst engaged in this embrace, the camera draws back and we see them as a couple holding tightly to each other in the middle of nowhere.

Running threads are repeated as often confusing – but comforting references to The Wizard of Oz, Elvis tunes (sung to Lula by Sailor) and close ups of striking matches. Fire as a symbol figures in the drama of their lives as it relates to both the strength of their passion and the death of Lula’s father who died in a fire. Retrospectives of both of their lives as told to each other (usually in bed after sex) are also in the fray. One hilarious instance is the story of Lula’s cousin Dell who would keep cockroaches in his underpants.

There is not a hint of reality in the entire film, but the passion between Sailor and Lula is almost tangible. They have full on sex all the time, on one occasion with interesting foreplay: Sailor tells Lula of his past exploits, making Lula ‘hotter than Georgia asphalt.’ They do what lovers do: talk, confess, dance, make love convincingly, drink in bars – and try and get ahead/away in a world full of weirdness. This includes incidently, Marietta, clutching glasses of Martini with a face full of red lipstick urging pursuers on from her bedroom.

The Sailor/Lula journey takes them to a place in Texas called ‘Big Tuna’ (it has ‘Fuck You’ written on a welcoming sign), where they meet Bobby Peru (Wilem Dafoe), sinister, with oily hair and rotten teeth who has an agenda of his own – to make Sailor an accomplice in an armed robbery. Bobby Peru is equal only to Frank – the mad psychotic villain in Blue Velvet in terms of general vileness and as a person you would most not like to meet in a dark alley without a firearm.

Although Lula knows that there is trouble afoot ‘the world is Wild at Heart and weird on top’, Sailor convinces her that all will be well ‘I’ll not let things get any worse, not in a million years’. It does though. The robbery gets as bad as these things can with no planning and thankfully Peru cops it in a way worthy of him. A dog though has its day and takes a hand away from the crime scene in its mouth – typical of a Lynch slice of dark humour.

Sailor returns to prison, and Lula – and Sailor’s now six year old son are there to meet him when he gets out. Believing that he is no good for her, Sailor then retreats only to return after being beaten, then visited by the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz. He is told this advice:

Sailor: ‘I have had no parental guidance.’ ‘I am wild at heart.’

The Good Witch: ‘If you’re truly wild at heart, you’ll fight for your dreams.’ ‘Don’t turn away from love.’

A lesson for us all.

Diane Ladd earned herself an Oscar nomination for the role of Marietta. Not surprising and well deserved. The truest mother-in-law from hell ever depicted on screen.

Wild at Heart is available both as special and ordinary editions in all formats from Amazon and other places. The special edition is worth the extra for the extras. The soundtrack is great too. Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ is an extremely haunting, atmospheric song played over Sailor & Lula drive sequences.

Click Here To Buy Wild At Heart

Grosse Point Blank: George Armitage: 1993: 103 mins

Main Protagonists: John Cusack/Mini Driver

‘Did you go to your (high school reunion)?’ – Martin to Marcella

‘Yes, it was like everybody had just swelled.’ -Marcella to Martin

A very cool soundtrack for a very smart film. The original score was by Joe Strummer. RIP

John Cusack (The Sure Thing) is Martin. A hit man on a job. He is at a crux in his life: at the same time as being world weary with what he does for a living, he is approached to go to a High School Reunion, and by a fellow hit man (played by Dan Ackroyd), to join a union for contract killers. Martin talks to his psychiatrist, who does not want him as a client knowing full well what Martin does for a living.

A hit goes wrong for Martin. Martin finds meaning in this and decides to go to his High School Reunion (persuaded by his PA, Marcella – played, delightfully well by Joan Cusack – they work together this well in High Fidelity as well)

The high school reunion has more portent for Martin as there he will face another demon: the love of his life Debbie (played by Mini Driver), the focus of recurring dreams. He left her high and dry at a prom night ten years previously.

Grosse Point Blank is a lovely film. There is violence, but this is not its central core. Martin wants to stop. Stop killing for money. He knows he has to, all fingers point in this direction. What is stopping him? Plenty. As on his tail are two government spooks, a ghoul hired to kill him and Dan Ackroyd himself, annoyed at not having recruited Martin to his union. Martin is fully aware of all of them as he meets with them each at various intervals during the course of the action. This makes the film what it is. A man is trying to rid himself of his immediate past whilst knee deep in the distant version.

Martin’s capacity to be on the right moral track is evident when he goes to see his mother – now incapacitated in a home. She is still a beauty but doesn’t recognise him and is not fully aware of Martin or what is going on around her. Martin has come from a broken home – what looks like an alcoholic father as he then visits his father’s grave and pours a bottle of whisky over it. This scene and others that follow show how willing Martin is to reject damage – no matter how his life has been thus far justifiable to him.

He sees Debbie at her place of work – she now is the local radio DJ. She is shocked to see him, shakes his hand but then they kiss. Nothing has been lost, it is all still there. Polite conversation gives sway to Debbie’s need to punish Martin which he accepts, awkwardly. Debbie puts the question as to whether she should accept Martin back in her life to the wider listening public – which includes two spooks outside after Martin’s blood. Martin registers their phone-in contribution: a great and delightful aspect of this movie is Martin’s struggle in the open home town whilst being followed by elements of his present. His capacity to strike the right balance is exceedingly impressive. He keeps telling folks that he is a hit man but no-one takes any notice and sees it as a means of glamorising his life – as all do in these situations.

We have all been there: you go home to find that it has been replaced by a concern: in this instance a petrol station come convenience store. Martin has been followed by the ghoul. Martin has soul and principles: the hapless counter staff is saved from the plastic bomb the ghoul has put in the microwave prior to the shoot out that Martin and the ghoul engage in whilst the help obliviously engages in an arcade in store game.

A particularly touching scene is when Martin goes to see Debbie impromptu at her house: her bedroom is just as it was when they were lovers ten years previously. He gives her an ‘aeroplane.’ Do adults really do this? Evidently.

Later Martin picks her up for the reunion and they set off together. The spooks who are watching Martin from a car outside, speculate at Martin/Debbie’s relationship as the couple go up the High School entrance steps. A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ is playing as they enter the school hall. For anyone who remembers the eighties the music in this section of the film is a nostalgic treat. An old school chum with her baby catches up with Martin, telling him of the joys of being settled in married life ‘it just gets better and better, she says. Martin holds on to her baby and they exchange a stare. It is a very sweet moment with ‘Under Pressure’ by Bowie/Queen in the background.

Martin and Debbie get it on in the nurse’s station – but the ghoul has appeared looking for Martin. One of the best fight sequences in filmdom ensues to The Beat’s ‘Mirror in the Bathroom.’ The film is worth seeing for this segment alone. It deserves the Joe Pesci award for the best use of a handy ballpoint. Debbie sees the back end of the finale though and flees the scene. She catches up with him later in his hotel room where he lays down the truth about what he is and does. But he wants to change:

Martin: ‘That’s why I came back – I wanted to see you, I wanted to start again’…

Debbie: ‘You don’t get it – you don’t get to have me’

Martin: ‘You’re overreacting’.

The last bit of the movie sees Martin rescue Debbie’s Dad in a BIG shootout. He single handed fends off the spooks and Dan Ackroyd (looking rather tubby), gets his comeuppance. Martin gets the girl and all is well.

Debbie forgives him…or something…

Debbie: ‘Some people say forgive and forget…naah, I dunno. I say forget about forgiving and just accept – and get the hell out of town.’

Click Here To Buy Grosse Pointe Blank

The soundtrack is thankfully available on London Records.

John & Yoko: A Love Story: Sandor Stern: 1985: 147mins

Main Protagonists: Mark McGann/Kim Miyori

‘She’s an original mind – that’s what she is’ – John Lennon to Brian Epstein about Yoko Ono

Every now and again there are real life love stories that are selfish and all consuming. In England, there have been two historical examples: Albert and Victoria, and, much later, John and Yoko. Theirs is a story of utter fixation and devotion. This gem is a TVM – a TV Movie. But that shouldn’t dissuade a viewer from giving it – and possibly peace, a chance. It is a long film though, so be warned.

It charts the period from John’s infamous faux pas of suggesting that The Beatles are (were) more famous than Jesus Christ (1966) – to his shooting in December 1980. Fourteen years. Spliced in between their own story, other events are charted – Epstein’s death, the break up of The Beatles and the various effects that this coupling has on their lives as celebrities/artists and as personal human beings with a conscious making difficult personal choices.

This is really the crux of the film. John and Yoko are as famous as famous gets. Their lives are continually in the spotlight. They both have egos the size of small planets. But this film depicts them as very real people going through a great deal of pain to love and support each other. Even if you are not a fan of either of their work – (Ono is definitely an acquired taste), there is no escaping the human here that will resonate with any mature adult who has had to leave one partner for another. Both John and Yoko were married when they met.

Another good soundtrack. It is as well to fall in love with a musician as this will inevitably enhance the emotions considerably. There was always a good chance that a movie about these two would have a good catalogue to accompany. Though John initially falls for Yoko’s work. He goes to see an exhibition of hers at New York. He immediately likes her. ‘The girl’s mad,’ John says to Brian Epstein whilst he is reading some of her thoughts. He sees her on the television after her work (a showcase film of 360 bare bottoms) has been banned. John defends her to his then wife, Cynthia. Yoko goes to see John at the EMI studios where they – The Beatles are recording an album. She sees John at the height of his fame being chased down the street by hoards of screaming girls. She has difficulty warming to John and his life – but he puts up the money for one of her shows at that helps sealing a budding friendship between them.

It is when he goes to a retreat in India and she writes to him there that the film depicts their deepening feelings for one another. ‘I Want You’ is played over scenes of John wandering around the retreat holding postcards from Yoko. Cynthia is in India as well as the other Beatles. She sees the attention John is giving Yoko’s correspondence. Of course they sleep together whilst their respective partners are away, after which, John tells Yoko; ‘there’s no looking back you know – this is it.’ ‘I am not going to let you go; we will be together from now on.’

The scenes where John and Yoko tell their partners of their relationship are particularly tender, but there is no alluding to the legendary origins of ‘Hey Jude’, which McCartney allegedly wrote for Julian Lennon as a plea for the child to accept Yoko. This is a flaw as the movie uses the music of The Beatles, John and Yoko, to carry us through the varying stages of a very intense and resonant relationship. Neither of their partners are happy at being left – Tony, Yoko’s partner keeps their daughter, causing considerable sacrifice to Yoko.

Their lives as artists are covered as John breeds resentment with the other Beatles – clock a young Peter Capaldi in the role of George Harrison. Yoko and John are treated with distain wherever they go and are asked about Cynthia in particular. Yoko’s art is considered ‘self indulgent’ by gallery visitors: ‘at least he will have clean laundry’, one visitor comments to another within earshot of John. It is in the middle of a rant about the racist English, that Yoko breaks the news to John that she is pregnant. It is whilst they are both being briefed regarding a recent drugs charge (their flat is raided under suspicion of possession of illegal substances), Yoko has a threatened miscarriage. John camps by her bedside for the duration; the event is covered in the television news. Sadly the baby dies with John and Yoko taping the diminishing heartbeat. Yoko’s battle to bear them a child is an ongoing feature of the movie and one that draws empathy from the viewer. Yoko was eight years older than John and had difficulty conceiving.

They marry and have their notorious honeymoon bed-in. They are completely bonkers, but so is the atmosphere of the age. ‘Give Peace a Chance’, is their protest song against the Vietnam War.

The cracks are beginning to show with the rest of the group – John is the first one to mention the prospect of a split, but Paul releases the news to the press that the band would split. Yoko loses another child to John. Tony, her ex-partner won’t allow Yoko access to her daughter. John is consistently supportive throughout this entire trauma reassuring Yoko that she shouldn’t give up hope in being reunited with her daughter. It is this more than likely inspired ‘Death of Samantha.’ A Yoko Ono treat.

They move to New York and ‘Imagine’ is released. Immigration though doesn’t want John as he has a conviction of marijuana possession. Montages of John and Yoko in concert are inter-spliced with images of Nixon in newsflashes and campaigning. The film works as a slice of social and cultural history as well as functioning as a love story of celebrities. The pressures on them are great and Yoko tells John to move to LA for a while – they need some time apart. He gets together with fellow celebs (Elton John is a hoot), he is lost without her though and returns to her in New York.

‘Woman’ plays whilst they go to the next stage in their lives: they finally have a child of their own. John is free from contractual obligations to anyone professionally and life is great – he decides to bring up Sean (J&Y’s boy) whist Yoko takes care of business. John has thankfully by this time lost the beard and long hair. The final chapter in the story sees Sean growing up (to ‘Beautiful Boy,’) John and Yoko making an album and the last months of John’s life before his murder in December 1980.

The difficulty with biopics is that it can never be certain that you are presented with the facts. But does this really matter? What you are left with here is a thorough journey of a particularly famous relationship set to some of the best music ever written. Sam Taylor Wood has made a film about John’s early life: see this first as a refresher.

Natural Born Killers: Oliver Stone: 1994, 115mins

Main Protagonists: Woody Harrelson/Juliette Lewis

‘We’ll be living in all the oceans now…’ – Mallory to Mickey.

There is inevitable controversy surrounding this film: it is about two serial killers that are bound by their love of violence as much as they are for their love of each other. Much has been said and written as to how this movie functions as a satire of the media/popular culture.

Sure, it does highlight the insatiable need of the viewing public for sensation, death and gore. It also stabs at the way the media thrives on this need and loses moral credulity in providing it. Mallory and Mickey did not turn themselves into folk heroes – the character of Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) does that. There is never any doubt that Mickey and Mallory are extremely damaged people; the evidence of this is especially in Mallory’s story. So this is included in a list of cult love stories as there is never any doubt that you root for these two. They are very strong central characters who undoubtedly love each other fiercely. Mickey’s consistent protection and preservation of Mallory makes him heroic.

This movie is visually stunning. The flashbacks are told in cartoon-strip like fashion which in some way adds to the disgusting nature of what is being told. Mallory has a nasty background of abuse – her father and mother are trailer trash grotesques she was trapped with and needed to escape from. Their images and dialogue are put across as villainous. Mallory’s earlier domestic life, that Mickey rescues her from, is presented in the style of an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ complete with canned laughter, even when the subject matter is incest. Often black and white interjects with vivid colour uses and heavy symbolism. Then the background will be something out of a mass media, a show or another landscape to that the pair inhabits – to one they wish to inhabit, or presents their state of mind. There is an immense use of imagery to this film. It is very interesting to watch, though some would find it lurid.

The opening sequence finds the pair in a drive by cafeteria occupied with some of the most stupid people to have been born: the waitress is fat and ugly and tries to flirt with Mickey who has his head in a newspaper. A truck drives in, killing a scorpion on its way bringing in two hillbillies who ogle Mallory as she dances. One sitting next to Mickey refers to Mallory as ‘pussy.’ ‘Her name is Mallory’, defends Mickey with the newspaper carrying both their names, pictures and headliner criminal deeds on the front page. No-one notices. One of the men starts to dance with Mallory ‘are you flirting with me?’ she asks. She then proceeds to give him a good hiding culminating with her jumping up and down on him. Mickey meanwhile is cutting an onlooker to pieces with an extremely large knife. Slo-mo is used from the POV of the bullet in its journey to the head of another ugly and fat proprietor; another patron is killed with a thrown knife. Mickey and Mallory always leave a survivor to tell the tale. There are two survivors so Mallory plays eeny-meeny to get to the last one. Once the lone survivor has been told what to tell the police – Mallory jumps into Mickey’s arms. They kiss, embrace, she tells him she loves him. The music changes to La Vie en Rose. The walls disappear and their surroundings become a night sky full of fireworks. The opening credits then roll with red blood dripping from the far right of the screen.

This is how we are introduced to these two characters: the scenes are either ultra violent or are unbelievably tender. There is no denying it; Mallory & Mickey were made for each other. After Mickey kills Mallory’s parents, they ‘marry’ on a bridge. The ceremony consists of her (in a white headdress) and him binding their hands together after inflicting deep cuts on their palms. The blood drips from their hands – intertwines as cartoon imagery of two red serpents, and makes it’s (their) way deep into the river below.

They go on a three week murderous spree being egged on by Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), for his cult American TV show. They are caught, jailed, and then their escape is filmed by Wayne, only for the two heroes to turn on him when they are done with him.

All the characters in this movie are less likable than the two main leads: everyone else feeds off them; Wayne, the Public, the prison warder Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). Even the policeman in charge of finding them and putting them behind bars has an ongoing fantasy of sleeping with Mallory. In a nice touch, he lingers over a crime scene that has her bottom print on a car imagining her physically being there.

You really do want them to escape and go on forever, not killing but being a couple. You hope that they stop and they do – the final scene being in a camper van with kids, another on the way for a pregnant Mallory.

‘Only love can kill the demon….’

At least eight murders have been blamed on this film and its influence. Oliver Stone has had to defend its content over the years that followed its release and it is a good thing that the lawsuit a victim made against Warner Brothers was kicked out of court. Ironically enough, another great movie starring Harrelson – The People vs. Larry Flint, looks at the issue of Freedom of Expression in America. It would be a shame not to have movies like NBK. The Director’s Cut DVD is out in August.

The Science of Sleep: Michael Gondry: 2006, 105mins

Main Protagonists: Gael Garcia Bernal/Charlotte Gainsbourg

‘I like your boobs.’ ‘They look friendly and unpretentious’ – Stephan to Stephanie

This is a love story with mixed and messy communication. That is no wonder seeing as though the hero – Stephan consistently confuses his dreams with reality and his imagination. The film works with at least two languages – not always with sub-titles, which adds to the sense of the misunderstood.

We first meet Stephan in his makeshift TV Studio (complete with cardboard cameras) demonstrating what constitutes dreams. He mixes the ingredients in a big pan on a stove. This is his other life though – away from reality.

He returns – from where we do not know, to his home, to stay with his mother. His bedroom has not changed since he was a child and Stephan sleeps in a box bed. Stephan himself – a very handsome early thirtysomething, is very childlike. This is more charming than it is irritating as it comes over as innocence and longing rather than the usual arrested development. In Stephan’s world inanimate creatures come to life, the views from windows are patterns of his own imagination and his colleagues at work are involved. A woman from work has a frank discussion in a bath with him – the water is made of cellophane. His role at work is unclear – the team make calendars: Stephan has made one up for them with each month devoted to a particular disaster. ‘Disasterology’ he calls it.

Stephan meets the girl next door, Stephanie – an attractive woman with creative leanings. She makes forests in boats. Stephan immediately likes her and tells her that he is an inventor. He brings a helmet – a mind reading device to show her (cycling helmets tied together with some washing line). Delightful exchanges transpire between these two: he helps her with her work, and steals her toy pony so he can fix it. He composes a piece of music for her. The relationship does not go smoothly however, as he dreams that he put a note under her door asking for her friend’s telephone number – when he actually did. At one point, he believes he is singing with his colleagues in a bear outfit, only to be outside his own front door the next minute with Stephanie outside in the hall. He asks her to marry him:

Stephanie: ‘1. I don’t believe in marriage’

‘2. You don’t want to be with me’

‘3. Are you out of your mind?’

He writes a lot of letters to Stephanie that make absolutely no sense that he never sends. He just constructs them in his head. How many times have any of us done this? He searches for her in his dreams in derelict houses lined with posters and discarded records. He ponders over the nature of human relations with memories of his father and mother. His mother is now with a magician – he interviews the both of them to find out what lies at the bottom of such mysteries, but then comes to the conclusion that his mum just likes ‘bullshit gurus.’ He tries to make sense of his feelings by constantly needing the input of those around him, something we all can relate to. The advice he gets from co-workers is often extremely funny. He has a constantly horny boss who puts everything and anything down to wanting a fuck. This contrasts nicely with another worker who persuades Stephan to operate from the heart.

The themes explored here are insecurity, longing, panic and playfulness. Stephan does not believe that Stephanie loves him – or can love him and behaves in a way that throws distance between them as he gets into a quandary and says the wrong thing.

What is great about this movie is that it – and Stephan does what lovers do under this kind of spell: the heightened emotion fuels the imagination, makes us daydream, project unrealistic scenarios onto the focus of our attention. We also imagine the worst when it is not the case. Love distorts and this is Stephan’s world. We go through the same our selves, there is nothing in this film that does not resonate – in spite of its heavy use of magic realism to demonstrate confusing and conflicting feeling.

Things get better between Stephan and Stephanie when he makes her a time machine – but get worse when she dances erotically with another man. She knows he is upset so goes to see him – he is asleep. She whispers in his ear:

‘Everything will turn out the way you want if you just stop doubting that I love you.’

Stephan and Stephanie have a tearful – angry confrontation which is at once tender, mad and sensitive. Stephan hurts Stephanie with accusations and abusive behaviour, but this is only because he loves her and is frightened. He accuses her of never finishing anything and she cries. All ends well though with them getting married in Stephan’s television studio and riding off on her now functional toy pony.

Written and directed by the same hand that gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep s a very similar film and equally as effecting. The main leads are excellent and the effects often simple but utterly touching. See it with a loved one.

Punch Drunk Love: Paul Thomas Anderson: 2002, 91mins

Main Protagonists: Adam Sandler/Emily Watson

‘I want to bite your cheek and chew on it – it’s so fucking cute.’ – Rena to Barry

‘I’m looking at your face and I just want to smash it – I just want to smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it – it’s so pretty.’ – Barry to Rena

It is doubtful that there has ever been a stranger love story than this. But it does what it says on the tin and works, mostly due to the wonderfully imaginative direction of Paul Thomas Anderson and the performance of Adam Sandler as the main male lead. Barry Egan is a painfully awkward character with seven domineering sisters that have evidently ball-broken him into almost non-existence. His sense of isolation is highlighted from the start by the physical spaces he occupies: the opening shot is of Barry having a conversation on the phone from a lone desk in an enormous room. There is nothing really surrounding this character for him to draw from. A harmonium mysteriously appears suddenly, left by a cab, which Barry rescues from the street. Probably a purposely planted piece of symbolism used to convey Barry’s need for event and music.

Rena enters his life very early in the film – the film is tightly drawn at 90mins and a lot happens in it. She wants him to look after her car for a little while. The exchange is awkward. But you feel that Barry wants to be connected with a woman that is not his sister – he knows he needs it. Intermittently, PTA stops the action and the screen is filled with lights and kaleidoscopes of colour forming vertical or horizontal lines. This is not at all alarming and suits what is happening. This happens upon Rena/Barry meeting.

The recurring interchanges between Barry and his sisters are nightmarish to be in on. They are awful people. There is to be a party, all the sisters are going to be there and one of them is getting Barry fixed up with a colleague. Three or four of them ring him at work – one visits. The conversations he has with all of them are interrogative and nasty. He doesn’t want to be set up and tells the sister playing cupid that he may not be there. He may have to renew his gym membership, which is met with annoyance…

‘I am only trying to be a friend to you Barry.’

Throughout their conversation, Barry is looking over at Rena’s car.

At the party a running gag becomes evident: Barry – in his youth took offence to being called ‘gay boy’ by his sisters and on one occasion put a hammer to glass. They repeat the offence over and over. What they think is wrong with their brother – is really just his frustration at not being free of this abuse. One sister – the one, who visited him at work earlier, asks him if he is nervous. But then goes on to say ‘c’mon gay boy – time to eat.’

Barry smashes two partition screens to the cries of ‘you retard.’ Barry asks his dentist brother-in-law about getting help (from a shrink) and admits to crying for no reason, which is given to his sister later on as a piece of gossip. This is later told to Rena – much to the frustration of Barry, who really just wants to be a man. All the exchanges that Barry has with his environment when he feels hampered are cloaked in a plonky discordant music over score, which changes with Barry’s mood and feeling.

An attempt at connecting with a woman via a chat line starts the movie’s main subplot: Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the part of a petty crook running a scam to blackmail those who give their credit card details over the phone for a slice of intimate chat. A villainous aspect has entered Barry’s life who knows were he works lives and card details. His attempts to overthrow this is one of the challenging features in Barry’s journey from awkward ‘gay boy’ to man.

The empty warehouse space of his work is contrasted with that of the supermarket – where Barry, amusingly collects as many puddings as he can in the hopes of redeeming the air mile vouchers on offer on the tins. The environment is full with bright light. The enjoyment of his life is starting.

It changes as he returns to work to face a confrontation with his sister about asking her husband for a shrink’s number and admitting to crying. She has Rena with her who has come in to thank him for looking after her car. He is further harassed over the phone by the girl on the chat line who he spoke to the previous night and has become a problem. Rena settles in his office to talk to him ‘it must be weird having all those sisters’. Despite being ball-broken in front of her, Rena asks Barry out anyway. It is 45mins into the film before they so much as have the first date. The film is about Barry and the way the environment changes as he falls in love. The catalyst is Rena and she evokes hopeful action and landscapes for Barry, really from the moment he meets her and continues as the relationship develops, but changes once this new loveliness is threatened.

Their date is a warm affair at a local restaurant and Rena isn’t put off by his explanation of the tins of pudding in his workplace. She confesses to him that she sought him out herself – and that she didn’t want to meet him at the party. She repeats the hammer story to Barry that she had been told by his sister/her friend and Barry freaks out in the gents soon after. The manager asks him to leave. Outside the restaurant with his girl, the music changes: it is orchestrated and symphonic: regardless of the unpleasant reminder of the past, Barry is feeling loved. They part, but she rings him soon after to tell him she wanted to kiss him when they left each other. He runs back to kiss her and she tells him she is going to Hawaii.

Barry returns to the supermarket with a colleague, to pick up more tins of pudding for the air miles to join her. He taps down the aisle to the music a la Gene Kelly. The altercations that he has on the phone are more and more forceful as he has become sure of Rena’s affections. This is the case of all the conversations that he has from now on. Once in Hawaii, he needs the number of Rena’s hotel and rings his sister for it – ‘I will fucking kill you if you don’t give it to me – she needs me give me the fucking number.’ His sister gives him the number. Once he is through to Rena the lights go on in the phone booth and so do those in the surrounding street parade.

They meet. She is wearing a dazzling white against the blue suit that he wears throughout the course of the film and they share an awkward embrace silhouetted against a distant Hawaiian beach loaded with colour. As they hold hands towards a hotel room, the camera closes in on their hands. A phone call to the chat company to threaten them brings him another challenge.

Once back they get into a scrape when a car full of hired men to hurt Barry backfires. Seeing his girlfriend’s face bleeding, he gets out of the car and beats them off with a crowbar. He tracks down the main man behind the scam – Phillip Seymour Hoffman and warns him:

‘I have so much strength in me – you have no idea.’ ‘I have a love in my life.’ It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.’

The final sequence sees Barry playing the harmonium with Rena wrapping her arms around him as he plays….a shard of blue horizontal light runs though the centre of the screen. ‘So here we go.’ – Rena.

Dazzling stuff.

Harold and Maude: Hal Ashby: 1971, 88mins

Main Protagonists: Bud Cort/Ruth Gordon

‘I knew that we were going to be good friends the moment I laid eyes on you.’ ‘You go to funerals often don’t you?’ Maude – to Harold

‘Yes.’ Harold – to Maude.

This is a cult classic and deservedly well loved. Watching it is a sheer pleasure and prompts continual smiling throughout. It is loaded with choice quotes that don’t just illustrate the mind set of the characters but have something important to say on attitudes towards living. It is their different attitudes towards life and living that is a current theme. Harold consistently tries to shock his mother by performing fake suicides: the first half hour is a liturgy of hangings, spliced veins, drowning, which his mother now has grown used to but by no means accepts. She sends him to ‘Uncle Victor’ a one armed army veteran to try to instil some sense into him to no avail. A psychiatrist asks Harold during a personality test: ‘where do you get fun?’, ‘what gives you that special satisfaction?’

Harold: ‘I go to funerals.’

It is at a funeral that Harold meets Maude, a 79 year old with a penchant for car theft, but an irrepressible gift for living. They form a firm friendship. They are extremely odd people, but very different in that Maude has an almost tangible optimism, but Harold is very, very dark. Maude lives in a trailer full of memorabilia – her life is full of items and gestures that convey the importance of being alive and free…

‘At one time I used to break into pet shops to free the canaries – but then I decided that was an idea long before it’s time…’

Juxtaposed with Maude and Harold’s developing relationship, is the sub-plot of Harold’s mother trying to find him a potential wife through a computer dating agency. Each attempt if foiled by Harold inflicting the hapless victim with another suicide scenario. It is clear throughout that despite their differences in age and outlook, Maude reaches Harold in a way that more conventional individuals cannot. Maude’s world view gradually affects Harold and it is this that is the driving energy behind them falling in love. In one particularly affecting scene Harold and Maude are sitting in a field full of daisies. Maude would like to be a sunflower – she had confessed to Harold. Harold would like to be a daisy ‘as they are all alike.’ Harold sees the flowers as all the same: ‘ah but they are not’, Maude openly deliberates to Harold that they are all different, some growing to the left, some to the right etc…

‘part of the world’s sorrow is that we are all that (pointing to the flower’s individualism), ‘and that we allow ourselves to be treated like that’ (waving a hand over the flowers collectively).

They rescue a tree and decide to take it to a forest, being hotly pursued by a policeman. When caught up with, Maude sharply tells the officer ‘don’t get officious –you’re not yourself when you’re officious – that’s the curse of a government job.’ They then proceed to steal his bike.

A wonderful day together – involving Harold giving Maude a piggyback, culminates in them sitting alone on a grassy bank reflecting openly to one another what a time of it they are having…..

Harold: ‘I’ve had the most wonderful day today,’ ‘I think you are beautiful.’

Maude: ‘You make me feel like a schoolgirl.’

It is during this scene that Harold looks at Maude’s arm and clocks the tattooed number. Maude is a Holocaust survivor. The distinctions in outlook are due to Maude having survived nihilism and Harold’s penchant for death is in direct contract to this. His perspective is that of doomed youth, where feeling alive is gained through the effects his suicides attempts have on those around him. Maude teaches Harold how to really live. This is done in a very gentle way and the lessons that Harold learn are subtlety delivered without Maude ever preaching or outwardly seeming to mentor Harold.

The most amusing response to Harold’s desire to marry Maude comes from the family priest:

Priest: ‘I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you that the idea of intercourse – the act of your firm, young body……commingling with…withered flesh….sagging breasts….and flabby b-b-buttocks….makes me want…..to vomit.’

He does of course say this whilst harbouring some perverse notions of his own barely being able to hide his envy of Maude which makes this scene particularly funny. It is important to note that the surrounding players in H&M are unbelievably good at their roles. His mother is especially good as the proper woman with values trying to impose some normality on the unhealthy Harold. The scene where she is taking a swim in a pool with Harold face down in it pretending to be dead is testament to his mother’s skill at retaining a healthy distance from her son’s need to shock and appal.

The eightieth birthday of Maude is celebrated between them with dancing and music and a surprise for Harold, which he fails to accept, but then does so reluctantly. Maude has swallowed tablets: ‘I’ll be gone by midnight.’ The initial shock is overcome by Harold, as he has now been taught how to live properly. ‘I love you Maude’, he says to her as she is going – ‘that’s wonderful Harold – now go and love some more,’ is her reply.

Harold and Maude is available on all regions.

Gail Spencer