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Addicted to Love
Review of Griffin Dunne's film
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Sam and Linda have been in love with one another for ages. One day, she is sent to New
York for only two months but as on the day of her return, Sam is preparing her a welcome back
romantic dinner, Linda's father turns up instead with a pathetic hypocritical cowardly
farewell letter from her. Refusing to admit the
obvious, Sam sets up immediately for New York and begins to search for her. He discovers
she no longer stays at the hotel but has moved in a flat. However, when he goes to visit
her, he is shocked to find out that she is already living with another man. Convinced that Linda
will eventually go back to him and still madly in love with her, Sam refuses to leave her.
So he finds an abandonned house opposite her flat and spends his days spying on the
lovers, waiting for a break up he considers inevitable. Soon, though, he realises that
a mysterious leather-clad biker seems to also be interested in these unsuspecting
lovers. |
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| This is the best film you could watch
if you are heartbroken and are stupidly waiting by the phone to be tortured a bit more! Anyway,
no matter how
hurt you are, I can promise you will laugh, even if bitterly, at this twisted black
comedy, which portrays the pathetic behaviour of betrayed lovers: a good slap in the face of
over-romantic people who need to get back down to earth a bit.
The film caricatures
how far they can go and what machiavelic plans such ordinary people can
come up with to try to win back their lost companion at any price, despite the fact that
it is not worth it, that their behaviour is ridiculous and will only cause everyone involved more
harm. |
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| Though the tone is light-hearted
and ultimately hopeful, there is an undeniable trace of
genuine bitterness and of pain hidden underneath the laughs. I guess what makes the
viewers feel better after watching this film is the realisation that their pain is not
solitary but universal, not so dramatic but quite pathetic in a way and that they will
come to that realisation in time. The realisation that if someone can treat someone else
so bad, they are obviously
not the right person for them and they do not deserve to be loved. A simple constatation
that someone in love is, of course, unable to reach as love is truly blind and shows
them a distorted vision of the object of their affection as some kind of wonderful
superhuman being. In addition to this, people in love always wrongly assumes that their
lover feels as strongly and sincerely as they do and that everyone who thinks otherwise
is mistaken like Sam. Or they feel it is unfair that their heartbraker left them in pieces and
now is happy with another while they are in pain, so they become bitter and cynical like
Maggie. Consequently, this generates an
obsessive
self-destructive behaviour, of
which the director shows the ridicule side, while also sympathising with the innocent
and tragic side. |
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