"All my life I've been tossed in the garbage, except when men wanted to use my body." "Do you like to ride, Elaine?" ***** Released two years ago this month, writer-director-editor-producer Anna Biller's 2016 indie sensation The Love Witch remains one of my favorite films in recent memory. The story is elegant in its simplicity: Elaine (Samantha Robinson) is our titular Love Witch, using what she refers to as "sex magic" and "love magic" to make men love her. She's a beautiful, and beautifully symbolic, metaphor for both the male gaze in cinema and men's innate fear of womanhood, as well as embodying societal linkages between women, love, and sorcery. The film understands how men have historically viewed women as they wish to see them—beings of pure fantasy, there to serve male desires. The Love Witch spins that reality on its head in wildly entertaining and deliciously subversive ways. The men are mos...
we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars