What says romance like a feminist Technicolour 60s witch narrative? Throw in some sex magic, murder and pathological narcissism and you’ve got yourself a date.
AND it’s directed by a woman – the immensely talented Anna Biller. Like music to my ears…
The Love Witch’s leading character is the bewitching Elaine (perfectly portrayed Samantha Robinson), a stunning young witch who has recently moved from LA to a small town and is determined to find a man to love her since her husband, Jerry, ‘left her’ (she very much murdered him). She moves into an American Gothic apartment and begins her crusade, combining methods of sex magic, love magic and a demure, seductive attitude to find a man worthy of her, telling her friend Trish (Laura Waddell) that to get a man you have to fulfil his every fantasy.
The beautiful Elaine has no trouble attracting men, and she certainly fulfils their fantasies. She seduces them with fine cooking, dancing in sexy lingerie and asking them what turns them on – as well as drugging them with her potions. But her magic always goes awry and leads each man to “go weird on her” as they become clingy, weeping shells, so desperate for Elaine they either die or kill themselves.
A fascinating, stunning and strangely fun look at sexual and gender politics, The Love Witch explores female sexuality in a very unique, clever way. Not only does the 60s Technicolour aesthetic look fantastic (seriously, I’m obsessed with it), but it also serves to place Elaine in a time which promised sexual freedom and exploration, but ultimately still left women sexualised and objectified – both in films and reality. Everything Elaine does – the way she dresses, does her makeup, and even speaks is to attract and appeal to men.
She’s read everything about them and considers herself an expert, stating that “According to the experts, men are very fragile. They can get crushed down if you assert yourself in any way”, and that “Men are like children. They’re very easy to please as long as we give them what they want.” Yet despite repeating these dated doctrines, Elaine is also extremely in touch with her feminity and sexuality, as shown when she talks about the beauty of periods and how men cringe away from such a natural, female process, saying: “Tampons aren’t gross. Women bleed and that’s a beautiful thing. Do you know that most men have never even seen a used tampon?” She condemns men for not accepting women as they are, then does the same to them, constantly trying to create a perfect romantic fantasy, but tiring of them as soon as she gets what she believes she wants.
Biller explores femininity and masculinity with Elaine as a perfect example of a femme fatale – a dangerous and sexy leading lady, alongside classically masculine characters such as the macho police detective Giff (Gian Keys) and stud ‘I-don’t-want-to-be-tied-down’ professor Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise). Elaine uses sex to try and get what she thinks she wants, using her femininity to her advantage.
Elaine forces men to love her as strongly as she craves, then finding it is too much for both them (their personalities and masculine bodies imploding), and her, as their needy natures fast become tedious as she wants a “real man.” And yet, when her perfect man, the classically stoic and masculine police detective Giff, refuses to drink her potions to stay under her spell, she stabs him, ending the film covered in his blood, repeating “love me” over and over.
Elaine is both a cynic and a romantic, both a victim of the patriarchy and a spanner in the works, combining old-fashioned dating tips with her occult power and female sexuality to control men and get her unattainable happily ever after. The occult coven she is a part of gives her this power, which she happily asserts over men and abandons them when they don’t fulfil her fantasy – the men are merely props. This is illustrated perfectly when Elaine and Giff stumble into a Renaissance re-enactment with her coven, who dresses the couple in king and queen costumes and marries them in a surreal, fantasy wedding scene – but while Elaine is thinking about true, romantic love, Giff is thinking about how the more you know someone, the less you can love them.
Ultimately, what Elaine wants isn’t love, it is fantasy, reverence and power (sound familiar, patriarchy?) When Giff refuses to obey and adore her, she kills him – fittingly on the bed, straddling him and penetrating him with the dagger, straight into his heart in an appropriate perversion of love and sex.
As the film reaches the close Elaine is harassed by a mob of townspeople, shouting to burn the witch. Although she is a murderer, their main focus still seems to be the fact that she is 1. A Witch and 2. An openly sexual woman – and again it’s worth noting that her crimes seem particularly sinister to the people because she has murdered men, and always in a sexualised setting. As a sexual woman with power, she must be stopped, the hypocrisy of this emphasised by the burlesque club setting. The crowd begins to strip Elaine and men begin to unbuckle their belts before she is saved by Giff. To stop this woman, their solution is to dominate and rape her – a telling implication about the way strong women who owned their sexuality have been viewed for generations (though I’m extremely relieved they didn’t include a rape scene and that she was saved).
I could write a long essay about the gender and sexual politics about The Love Witch – and the film couldn’t have come along at a better time. With the grab-em-by-the-pussy President and the #MeToo movement, a film about a sexual, murderous, beautiful witch seems all the more relevant and important to underline issues of gender, sexuality, power and feminism. More and more women are reclaiming their feminine identities as a ‘witch’ in the same way feminism has reclaimed terms like ‘slut’ – the witch identity becomes a way to connect with a long history of women who were condemned for being different, for being sexual, or just for being women. Elaine turns the patriarchy on itself, both as a woman who has truly claimed her feminity while also longing to play along and find a man to please and to love her. In the process, she becomes the thing the patriarchy fears most.
The Love Witch was captivating, striking, sexy and pertinent, well worth a watch as we come up to Valentine’s Day!
The Readhead 