>>REVIEW
LOVE IS WORK
DIRECTED BY John Kalangis
Opens Friday, June 15
Uptown Screen
Love is Work revolves around five couples at various stages of their relationships, exploring the supposedly different issues that each couple is facing. Conveniently, each of these five couples have convened in the same restaurant at the same time, allowing the stories to weave together with a unique and sometimes nauseating cinematic approach. The images sometimes blend together to show action at different tables in the same shot, with overlapping dialogue, which would make the plot difficult to follow. You know, if there was a plot.
The film was created under an interesting premise – the 10 unknown actors involved were given no script, just a general idea of where Kalangis wanted the scene to end up. The film took a measly five hours to shoot, with each couple getting one hour to improvise their scene, and in hindsight, an hour was far too much, as most of the conversations ended up hitting the plot points too early and spiralling into repetition.
Kalangis does a good job of giving us five distinctly different couples, but what he doesn’t supply is five different sets of problems. Each couple is unhappy, and most of that unhappiness centres around the issue of a lack of trust. Hitting the same basic point in all five scenarios creates an emotional monotony that makes the movie seem overlong, even though it clocks in at only 75 minutes.
When the film ends, little is resolved. Only one of the couples really manage to bring their story any kind of closure, which is possibly a valuable reminder that love is, in fact, work, and that not all of our problems can be worked out over a dinner conversation. More likely, though, it’s indicative of the haphazard nature with which Kalangis approached the entire project. He deserves some credit for his unique approach to the film, but he left his actors too little to work with. |
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