Love Streams

Love Streams is at once a culmination of the director's obsessions and his most atypical film.

There's no other American director who can do what John Cassavetes does on the screen.

The movie is exasperating, because we never know where we stand or what will happen next. I think that's one of its strengths: There's an exhilaration in this roller-coaster ride through scenes that come out of nowhere.

John Cassavetes's career of risk taking comes to a climax in this rich, original, emotionally magnificent 1984 film.

Co-written by Alan Herman, and adapted from his 1981 play, Love Streams gives [Gena] Rowlands one of her best roles and she runs with it. Sarah may be a loony, but she sure is fun to watch as she bowls in stockings and does back flips in Robert's pool.

The impossible truth of the performances in Cassavetes' work feels like a confrontation of the contradictions and fears that we try to hide from ourselves.

This column does not have enough space to contain my love for this film.

While Cassavetes would direct one more feature, stepping into the troubled production of Big Trouble (1986) at the request of friend Peter Falk, it is Love Streams that stands as the magnificent, final opus.

Its French title, Torrents d'amour, better hints at the overflowing heart of this magnificent melodrama, effervescently bubbling with a charming, infuriating, incorrigible booziness.

[Cassavetes'] final performance is so powerful ... Rowlands, of course, rises to meet his performance.