Better Late Then Never

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Cassavetes's oeuvre has consistently been misinterpreted at "realist." In fact, his films are generally expressionistic- self-conscious presentations of his mind-set-as-such. Having said that his earlier films, which I must say sometimes upset me with what I found to be their misogynistic machismo, often struck me as trying to use artistic expression to make subjective masculinity seem like an objectivity- a fact to be taken into consideration. Jackson Pollock did this too, of course. The difference is that Pollock, in his work if not life, never presented the female as lesser in relation to male subjectivity. Cassavetes, sadly, did so often, but not, I will venture, in this work. In Love Streams the filmmaker's fantasies are his alone- he asks for no ratification from the audience. Yes: a character played by him is an awful date to a woman who then falls for the character. But I think we are not meant to identify with either the male or the female in this scenario so much as with ourselves as viewers. Cassavetes is putting his id on display here and asks simply for recognition of his subjectivity as such. Indeed, if there is a figure of identification for the viewer it is the character played by Gena Rowlands, the sister of the Cassavetes figure. Befuddled and disgusted by a world that does not acknowledge her romantic demands she is that which her brother, the artistic articulation of suffering and resolution, can only satisfy. He does so by taking the mantle of an Old Testament martyr, but one capable of laughing and crying at and for himself.

In the early days of movies on cable, they used to air the same movie repeatedly over the course of a month, as if it was a film with daily showings at a movie house.Although LOVE STREAMS barely scratched at a theatrical release, it did find its way onto cable, and I came upon it by sheer serendipity. And I was captivated, going on to watch it 10 or 12 times before its run was up. I have not seen this film since (I saw it on cable in 1984) but I remember it vividly.I generally don't write 'spoiler' IMDb comments, but this film is destination cinema, you will watch this film because you elect to do so, and as such (and likely as a serious film buff or student of cinema) you will not mind hearing comments in advance to point out devices or moments of note.My favorite scene is the one where Gena Rowland's character announces that she's going to Europe - on her own. That's significant because she's so utterly out of control, you fear for her.There is a scene at the airport. It is easy to envision how this looked in the script... /cut to THE AIRPORT. The filmmakers have no budget. There is an absolutely blank interior stage. To indicate that we're at the airport, there is a simple length of tall chain link fencing. Standing near the fence, GENA ROWLANDS is poised expectantly, waiting alone - nearly dwarfed by a comically huge and chaotic pile of luggage. She is attempting to hire a porter, but the porter does not speak any English.PORTER Sorry Madame, I do not speak English.GENA Just listen to the sound of my voice. You *will* understand me.* * *That's it. What I love about this film is that the airport scene is played exactly as it might have been played on the stage, and in context of the film, it works. There's no airport. But as you watch the scene, you are there. Stage to screen and yet again stage... and it works.* * *This film is about relationship, and relationships. It is stunning work and deserves to be seen.

Firstly, it's not easy to have the full understanding of the cinematographic universe that John Cassavetes has. To take a stage play by Ted Allan and to co-write a script and create something that looks like everything but something you can imagine on a theater stage. In "Opening Night", almost everything occurred on the stage; here we have cities, we have bars, we have houses and, of course, people…Real people.I don't know if it makes any good to write long reviews about every Cassavetes' film. He pursued a style, he conquered it and he maintained it while dealing with different topics. "Love Streams" is the story of two brothers, Robert and Sarah (Cassavetes and his eternal muse Gena Rowlands), and some days they spend together. Like in the best movies, there's room for the viewer to draw conclusions. When Sarah knocks at Robert's door, it appears that they haven't seen each other for a long time; but we don't really know. When Robert receives his son (Jakob Shaw), the house is full of women and it appears that he doesn't care about the kid, but we don't really know; we also never fully understand the nature of Robert's work as a writer, meaning that we know he writes novels but the house full of women and the process he uses to create remains widely unexplained. When Robert interviews a singer he thinks is beautiful, it appears that he cares about her, but we don't really know. All these situations are not as simple as they sound; they're constant subjects in the film's two and half hours duration time. The same happens with the Rowlands character; a woman who loves his family but seems to be loosing them. There's a scene in which Sarah, her daughter Debbie (Risa Blewitt) and her husband Jack (Seymour Cassel) sit together to review the divorce papers and suddenly the little girl stands up and tells her mother: "I want to go with daddy".Sarah reacts as an unstable woman would do, and there are many moments in the film where we see this characteristic (we even witness a short but honest visit to a psychiatrist). However, her problem is not completely detailed and we have to figure it out through the same process we use to study Robert and every other character.This is what Cassavetes does. He puts the viewer to work. He presents the characters, he lets us know what we could normally see with a camera (Al Ruban's beautiful and observing camera, in a very similar style to "Opening Night"): the outside. The rest? Well, it's real life and people deal with it as it comes.In "Love Streams" you also have to deal with it. Deal with the things the characters are dealing with. It's not like you've never been involved with a movie character.

I have watched this movie many times over the years. As with all of Cassavetes movies, repeated viewing improves it. This is a good solid effort with a great final image of Cassavetes waving goodbye (both to Sarah & to us). - An interesting character study of a brother & sister. Nothing actually gets resolved during the course of the movie. We just get to watch these two characters for awhile. Both characters are just as messed up at the end as they were at the start.As much as I like the movie, I wouldn't go overboard raving about it. I recognize that it isn't perfect. I think that the opera dream sequence at the end of the picture is kind of annoying. However, on the positive side, it avoids including the bad acting that mar some of Cassavetes other movies.