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Tag: Caleb Landry Jones

  • ‘Dracula: A Love Tale’ Review: Luc Besson’s Kitschy Vampire Pic Is Light on Gore and Heavy on Amour

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    After taking a swing for the fences with the offbeat drag queen thriller, Dogman, Luc Besson returns to more familiar terrain with his fresh take on the world’s most famous bloodsucker. And yet, blood is mostly a rare substance in this suprisingly tame bodice-ripper, which frames Count Dracula‘s tale as a century-spanning romance filled with tons of amour and only a few splashes of gore.

    The French filmmaker titled this umpteenth adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula: A Love Tale, revealing the softer side of an action auteur who made his name abroad in the 1990s with artsy shoot-‘em-ups like La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional, then went full-on Jerry Bruckheimer by writing and producing the highly lucrative Taken and Transporter franchises.

    Dracula: A Love Tale

    The Bottom Line

    Packs more bodices than bite.

    Release Date: Friday, Feb. 6
    Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, Raphael Luce
    Director-screenwriter: Luc Besson

    Rated R,
    2 hours 9 minutes

    Besson may have built his career on guns and mayhem — but those who have followed his work know he’s always been more of a diehard romantic at heart (emphasis on die and hard). Whether it’s the swooning threesome of free divers in The Big Blue, the space cadet lovebirds in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets or the obsessive fantasy girl of Angel-A, the 66-year-old director has no problem piling on the cheese, which, well, makes him very French after all.

    Cheese and kitsch, with smatterings of blood and decapitated heads, are all on the menu in Dracula, which is a watchable if totally ludicrous version of the Stoker story. At best, the movie is another showcase for the always-interesting-to-watch Caleb Landry Jones, who plays the lovestruck vampire with complete earnestness, even when his character is surrounded by goofy CG gargoyles, dancing aristocrats, horny nuns and other random things Besson tosses in front of the camera.

    Like in Dogman, Jones carries a film that’s a pot-au-feu of good and bad ideas, which the director executes with his typical stylistic flourishes — although Dracula’s stuffy, overblown aesthetic makes it look at times like a Count Chocula commercial from three decades ago. Released in France late July, where it performed only modestly (it made twice as much money in Russia), the movie is unlikely to take a big bite out of the U.S. market.  

    It’s hard to even categorize Dracula as a horror flick, so much does it emphasize the passionate dark side of Prince Vlad the Impaler, aka Count Dracula, whom we first meet in 1480 when he’s having a wild sexcapade with his paramour, Princess Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu). Literally pulled from his booty call by army stewards, Vlad heads into a big battle while Elisabeta is forced to flee the castle, after which she’s viciously murdered by the enemy.

    It all happens fast and without much thought, although Besson slips in a few memorable touches, such as a field of snow filled with bear traps that explode like landmines. After cradling Elisabeta’s dead body in his arms, Vlad completely loses his shit, stabbing the kingdom’s orthodox priest with a crucifix and vowing to bring his only love back to life.

    Rest assured that none of this is in the original novel, which the director takes still more liberties with after the story jumps to Paris in 1889. There we meet another priest, played by Christoph Waltz in full snark mode, who serves as the Vatican’s official vampire hunter and arrives in town to deal with a fang-toothed vixen (Matilda de Angelis) locked up in an insane asylum. Soon Dracula turns up, dressed like an elegant dandy and armed with a vial of homemade perfume that intoxicates all the women around him, and, if we’re being honest, functions like a date rape drug.

    It’s not worth detailing how the Count eventually reconnects with Elisabeta, now called Mina and engaged to a guileless lawyer (Ewens Abid) held prisoner by Dracula’s animated minions. Plot mechanics and credibility are less important than the emotional through line Besson attempts to forge via Jones’ extravagant turn, which involves the actor wearing multiple layers of makeup and dozens of different costumes, from medieval battle gear to a variety of fluffy shirts, one of which he wears while dancing what looks like the Louis XIV two-step.

    It’s all so silly, yet also so sincere that Besson deserves a little credit for putting himself out there to such an extent. His Dracula may be weird and ham-fisted and hopelessly romantic; at least it’s original. No form of AI could have concocted some of the things he’s cooked up here, nor sidelined the requisite violence and gore — of which there is some, but much less than expected — to focus on one undead man’s lovesick blues.

    The mood at times recalls Guillermo del Toro’s swooning recent take on Frankenstein, though the closest thing that comes to mind is actually Bram Stoker’s Dracula, whose gothic stylings Besson seems to be emulating in certain scenes. That film received a mixed reception when it came out in 1992, but it’s developed a steady cult following over the years, especially for Coppola’s use of practical effects and cinematic shadowplay.

    Besson’s kitschy romance is unlikely to come to the same fate, although when seen in the light of his long and varied filmography (over 100 credits in 40-odd years), it shows that the French director can still think out of the box — or is that the coffin? — churning out mass entertainment with its own strange aroma.

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    Jordan Mintzer

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  • Caleb Landry Jones, Peter Sarsgaard, Andrea Riseborough Join Movie Adaptation of Don DeLillo’s ‘Zero K’

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    Director Michael Almereyda has found the leads for his long-gestating movie adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Zero K.

    The film will star Caleb Landry Jones, Peter Sarsgaard and Andrea Riseborough, with production cameras set to start rolling in early 2026 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Almereyda, having penned the screenplay, will center the Zero K adaptation on a young man drawn into the designs of his tech billionaire father in a remote desert compound where the wealthy seek to outwit death using cryonics and radical science.

    The woman who binds these two estranged men submits to the project with mixed emotions, as they all face challenges linking love, life and death, according to a synopsis from the producers. Landry Jones is known for roles in Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Nitram, which earned him the best actor prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

    Sarsgaard will also star in John Ashpool’s upcoming series Neuromancer and he also appears in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film The Bride!, based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And Riseborough appeared in Birdman, Mandy, Possessor and The Death of Stalin and also stars in Jan Komasa’s Good Boy, which bowed in Toronto.

    For Zero K, Almereyda will reteam with Sarsgaard after their collaboration on Experimenter, and with cinematographer Sean Price Williams after he shot the films Marjorie Prime and Tesla.

    “I feel lucky to have gathered such a distinctive and masterful cast, and to reunite with Peter and Sean. DeLillo’s book captures a particular mix of realism and dream logic, wonderment and dread, and we’re eager to translate this into a movie,” Almereyda said in a statement.

    The Zero K film will be produced by Anthony Katagas, Rodrigo Teixeira, Renée Frigo, Giorgos Karnavas and Almereyda.

    Landry Jones is represented by Anonymous Content and UTA, while Sarsgaard is represented by Anonymous Content and WME. Riseborough is represented by CAA, Independent Talent Group and Untitled Entertainment. 

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    Etan Vlessing

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  • Luc Besson Will Take a Stab at Directing Dracula

    Luc Besson Will Take a Stab at Directing Dracula

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    Image: Francois G. Durand/Getty Images (Getty Images)

    There’ve been a lot of versions of Dracula running around in pop culture. Within the past decade, he’s been on a boat, ran a hotel, and been incredibly depressed after his wife was murdered, and we eat it up (almost) every time. Folks love themselves some Drac, and you can count Luc Besson among them, because he’s be cooking up a Dracula movie of his own.

    Dracula Attacks In Exclusive Clip From The Voyage of the Demeter

    Per Variety, the Valerian director will direct an adaptation of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel. Titled Dracula – A Love Tale, the upcoming film is being billed as a “big-budget reimagining” that functions as an origin story for the Prince of Darkness. Caleb Landry Jones, who’s already worked with Besson on 2023’s DogMan, will play 15th century Prince Vladimir, who becomes a vampire after cursing God for the death of his wife. Centuries later in 19th century London, he discovers a woman who looks just like his lost love and makes her the object of his affection obsession.

    At present, Jones is only joined by Christoph Waltz, though it’s unclear what role the No Time to Die actor will have in the story. Deadline further reports other “buzzy” cast members are being talked to for key roles, and the film will lean more into the gothic romance elements of the character.

    The next few years are going to big for fans of classic horror icons. Along with Universal’s Abigail in April (a reimagining of the studio’s 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter), Robert Eggers has his own Dracula movie in Nosferatu, which is expected to drop sometime this year. Maggie Gyllenhaal is doing a Bride of Frankenstein movie as Guillermo del Toro handles a separate Frankenstein adaptation, and a Wolf Man movie from Leigh Whannell is currently set to launch in October.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • Caleb Landry Jones & Christoph Waltz To Lead Luc Besson’s Next Movie, Ambitious Origin Story ‘Dracula – A Love Tale’: EFM Hot Project

    Caleb Landry Jones & Christoph Waltz To Lead Luc Besson’s Next Movie, Ambitious Origin Story ‘Dracula – A Love Tale’: EFM Hot Project

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    EXCLUSIVE: One of the last big European Film Market pre-sales projects to be revealed is one of the most intriguing as SAG winner Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri) has been set to star with two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) in a big-budget reimagining of the Dracula story from Lucy filmmaker and Taken creator Luc Besson.

    Based on Bram Stoker’s iconic novel, sources close to the production confirm to us that the project will be Besson’s next movie and mark his own take on the vampire classic about the dark Prince who is condemned to eternal life.

    We hear this has an origin story element to it exploring in a little more depth the gothic romance between Prince Vladimir and his wife whose loss turns him to forsake God and become a vampire. Buyers familiar with Besson’s script tell us there are some epic and potentially spectacular set pieces.

    Landry Jones will play Dracula. It’s not clear yet which character Waltz will play, but talks are underway with other buzzy cast to join in the other key roles.

    The project is expected to have a big budget for a European movie but is nowhere near Valerian levels. Luc Besson Productions is producing with EuropaCorp co-producing. The aim is to shoot this year.

    The project has been bubbling in the market for a little while but is now firming up with Paris-based seller Kinology handling sales and discussing the project with potential distributors.

    Landry Jones and Waltz are both Cannes Best Actor winners. The former for Justin Kurzel’s Nitram. The latter for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Landry Jones, also known for playing Banshee in X-Men: First Class and ‘Jeremy’ in Get Out, recently collaborated with Besson on 2023 Venice Film Festival movie DogMan, which was another movie about a tortured outcast, and showcased why he is considered one of the most distinctive young actors around.

    DogMan was billed as something of a comeback for visionary filmmaker Besson, a totem of French cinema who made his name with movies such as Big Blue, Leon and The Fifth Element, but whose career in recent years has been dogged by the bruising financial experience of mega-budget Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets and sexual misconduct allegations, including by an actress from that production. Besson steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and last year, the filmmaker was cleared of all charges in that case by France’s equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Briarcliff will release DogMan domestically this spring after it was picked up widely by buyers in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Kinology also handled sales on that one.

    Besson is also in post-production on intimate drama June And John, an experimental film he shot during Covid lockdown with newcomers Luke Stanton Eddy and Matilda Price.

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    Andreas Wiseman

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  • Dogman Gives Caleb Landry Jones His Joker (And Catwoman) Role

    Dogman Gives Caleb Landry Jones His Joker (And Catwoman) Role

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    With 2023 marking the year of Luc Besson being legally cleared of all sexual misconduct charges brought against him by Sand Van Roy, perhaps it’s ironic that the movie he should choose to come out with posits that, in this life, you can only trust bitches. That is to say, dogs. And sure, there are some male ones in the film, too, but nonetheless, the antithetical-to-his-denial-of-misconduct quality is there. And yet, dichotomy and duality is at the heart of Dogman, which marks Besson’s twenty-first film since he began releasing them forty-two years ago (with the short film, L’Avant-dernier, serving as his 1981 debut). And it seems with this one, Besson is determined to have it characterized as a “return to form,” which, certainly, it is. Even if a form that borrows heavily from many other recent tropes. Not least of which is Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in 2019’s Joker. 

    Caleb Landry Jones, who delivers the performance of his career thus far, is only too ready to emulate that trope as Douglas Munrow a.k.a. the eponymous “Dogman” himself. And yes, like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman (or even Danny DeVito’s Penguin), he gravitates toward this particular type of animal because it is the only living creature that has ever shown any type of kindness or affection toward him. This starts from an early age (as it did for Penguin with his penguins), which we learn about through the device of retelling it from the present to a psychiatrist named Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs). It is Evelyn who is called (in the middle of the night, of course) into the New Jersey detention center where Douglas is being held until they can decide, first and foremost, what his gender is. Initially arrested while wearing Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” getup (adding a dash of Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey into the pastiche), the police are too confused by Douglas to understand that he’s merely a cross-dresser who happened to be on his way to perform at a drag show that night before he was so rudely interrupted by someone seeking to destroy the perfectly imperfect insular world he had built with his coterie of dogs. 

    Naturally, we don’t get to that portion of the story until the end, after Douglas has rehashed his entire harrowing ordeal of an existence to Evelyn. Somewhat surprised that he’s so willing to talk to her (and often confess to various crimes in the process), he eventually tells her that the reason why he does is because pain recognizes pain. And for Evelyn, whose own story goes far more unexplored, that pain threatens to return in the form of her physically abusive ex-husband, who’s been skulking around her house to try to see their son, even though he’s been forbidden by a judge from doing so. But again, Besson isn’t making this movie about a Black woman. It is, as usual, the story of an alienated white man. But, at the bare minimum, Besson didn’t take the Todd Phillips approach by making him a conventionally straight incel. Granted, Douglas has his own romantic desires for a woman go unfulfilled, but it says something that he’s at home among the drag world after spending much of his youth in a cage studying women’s magazines. The ones his mother had to hide from the sight of Douglas’ violent father, Mike (Clemens Schick), behind the wall of the dog cage.

    It is this cage where Douglas will be forced to make a home when Mike exiles him there. This because Douglas’ traitorous older brother, Richie (Alexander Settineri), snitches on him about feeding the dogs when they’re not supposed to be. For, in case you couldn’t guess, the only reason someone as hateful as Mike would own dogs is to use them in fights. Ergo, starving them just before one so that they’ll be extra bloodlusting. Incidentally, the word “Dogman” can also refer to a person who raises dogs for the sole purpose of dog fighting. 

    In a certain sense, that’s what Douglas ends up doing, too. For he raises his fellow brothers and sisters (telling his father he prefers the dogs to his own family, which is how he ends up being exiled to the cage in the first place) to fight for him. To serve as the protectors he never got in his parents—the people who are supposed to love and protect you at all costs. Instead, Douglas must receive that from the family he “makes” in his canine brethren. Retreating entirely into the pack after his father shoots a gun at him, not only clipping a finger off, but lodging a bullet in his spine that 1) can’t be removed without risk of death and 2) permanently paralyzes Douglas. 

    As the rest of his youth unfolds, Douglas is shuffled around, landing in a home where he meets the only woman he’ll ever love: Salma Bailey (Grace Palma). It is she who teaches him about theater, and how it is the gateway to being anything and anyone you could ever want to be. This is, undoubtedly, what affirms his love of dressing up as women, ultimately leading him to performing once a week at a drag club. But only for songs that allow him to remain stationary (he can stand without a wheelchair for the length of a song), thus performing as “old-timey” women like Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich (this being a very Besson touch). In the scenes leading up to Douglas’ eventual discovery of the club as a haven that will allow him to make some (legal) income, he admits to Evelyn that it was hard, at first, to find work. What with his wheelchair-bound status. This is part of what leads viewers to believe that it might have been a more discriminatory time in the U.S. (i.e., the 90s). But, to that end, perhaps the oddest aspect of Dogman is its sense of time. Although Douglas tells Evelyn he’s thirty years old, the year of his birth is shown as 1991. Theoretically, that ought to mean we’re in 2021, and yet, the use of VHS tapes for the security cameras that show his dogs stealing from rich people makes it feel like it’s meant to be set in some earlier time, when it was so much more difficult to catch a criminal (and, again, so much easier to discriminate in the workplace). But then, other details, like Evelyn talking on a cellphone with headphones while driving, continue to suggest a more current time period. 

    And yet, just as we don’t really question how or why his dogs can understand and react to the words Douglas is telling them, we don’t much question the holes in the fabric of Dogman’s space-time continuum. Besson is too good at delivering a filmic feast for the eyes to distract from such an anomaly. This includes using the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” to soundtrack Douglas’ fruitless job search before finally showing us a man in Annie Lennox drag (the suit and cropped orange hair, obviously) singing along. Eventually, Douglas finds himself in that same club where the Lennox impersonator is lip syncing and implores the owner for some work, declaring that if you can perform Shakespeare, you can perform anything. 

    But it isn’t just a Shakespearean or even Joker influence at play as the plot of Dogman progresses. There’s also some notable Home Alone booby trap action going on in act three, as Douglas rallies his canine army to defend him against a gang boss he enraged at the outset of the narrative. And all because he was trying to do a good deed for a sweet old lady who was being milked for too much “protection” money by these New Jersey goons. But, as it is rightly said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Douglas has learned that time and time again, yet can continue to tolerate existence because of the purity and goodness he sees in dogs. And they, in turn, show him the loyalty and devotion he’s never found in any human. Indeed, they’ll go to the ends of the Earth to stick with their “master” (even if Douglas probably sees himself as more of an equal). In this regard, one could even bill Dogman as something like a deranged Homeward Bound. As another recent dog movie, Strays, also happens to be. 

    During the expectedly violent (because: Besson) denouement occurs, it’s apparent that Besson seeks to make his character Shakespearean in his fatal flaw of being a romantic, even after all he’s experienced to know better. And, because Besson loves martyr figures, he lays the Christ imagery on thick at the end, as though we needed to be reminded that Douglas most certainly possesses a bit of the Balthazar (though a donkey, not a dog) from Au Hasard Balthazar characteristic: being consistently beaten down by life despite doing no harm, yet continuing to persist in the face of his often literal bruisings. Unlike the Joker, however, this hardening of the spirit doesn’t turn him evil, per se, only makes him yet another threat to society and its insistence that “being a good boy” will get you far.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Heaven Knows What: The Rihanna and Lana Del Rey of Movies

    Heaven Knows What: The Rihanna and Lana Del Rey of Movies

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    In 2011, Rihanna released the music video for “We Found Love.” Directed by Melina Matsoukas, its central focus is Rihanna in the role of a drug-addicted “mischief-maker,” crazy in love with the “Clyde” of the duo, played by Dudley O’Shaughnessy. It was made instantly immortal for its indelible images of Rihanna and O’Shaughnessy in a bathtub together, at a skate park together, in a field together (Rihanna running topless through it caused quite the stir in County Down), at a fish and chips restaurant acting fools together and, of course, doing donuts in a car together. All throughout the video, the interspersed images of pills falling, eyes dilating and explosions in the sky are intended to mirror the effects of a drug-addled mind—and how such a mind can also suffer the effects of being addicted to the drug called love (as Kesha once said, “Your love is my drug”).

    Rihanna’s relationship intensity being fueled by the cocktail of drugs and abuse speaks to the common intertwinement of both when it comes to a woman staying in such a harmful (on every level) situation. It truly is addictive, this state of masochistic “pleasure-pain.” And that’s why the video’s opening narration from Agyness Deyn is so honest and affecting as she says, “It’s like you’re screaming, and no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed that someone could be that important. That without them, you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless; like nothing can save you. And when it’s over, and it’s gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back. So that you could have the good.” This much applies to Harley Boggs (Arielle Holmes), a homeless heroin addict flitting from place to place in New York City. Once upon a time, she did so with her beloved, Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), but at the beginning of the Safdie brothers’ Heaven Knows What (based on Holmes’ memoir Mad Love in New York City), she has been forsaken by him as a result of her “catting around.” More than likely in exchange for a much-needed dose of smack. This occurs after the somehow stressful (it’s always stressful with the Safdie brothers) opening scene of the two making out passionately on the ground as though they’re in the privacy of a bedroom instead of in a very public place. But then, there’s no such thing as “dignity” when you’re addicted to heroin…or love.

    Moments later, a scene of Harley sobbing outside the library reveals that the dynamic has shifted—and Ilya has cut her off from his supply of love. So it is that the Romeo and Juliet nature (in all its desperate and dramatic flair) of the narrative takes hold, with Harley telling Ilya that she’ll prove her love for him by going to the great length of killing herself as a means to assure his forgiveness. Cold and unmoved by her earnest pleas for him to absolve her, Harley sets about procuring a razor blade by panhandling for the money as the voiceover of her reading a goodbye note to Ilya explains, “Ilya dearest, I need you to know that I love you, baby. And I need you to know how sorry I am. Really. I never wanted to die. I don’t know what will become of you now, and I won’t ever know if you’ll really forgive me. I’ll always love you, even in death, and I’m so sorry that things had to come to this. Love forever, Harley.” It’s that last tortured “love forever” in particular that reminds one of something out of a Lana Del Rey song, with the oft-melodramatic singer promising such things as, “I love you the first time/I love you the last time/‘Cause I’m your jazz singer/And you’re my cult leader/I love you forever, I love you forever.” Yes, it sounds a lot like something born out of Harley’s mind as well. And, appropriately enough, both Ultraviolence and Heaven Knows What were released the same year: 2014.

    It was the title track from Del Rey’s sophomore album that also vowed, “I will do anything for you, babe/Blessed is this union/Crying tears of gold like lemonade.” It bears a similar lack of self-respect to what Harley would (and does) say to Ilya, who patently treats her like shit. Worse still, knowing he can do just that and she’ll still come crawling back for more. It is this type of “love” that is so often romanticized in film and, yes, pop songs. Going as far back as the Shangri-Las (straight out of the very decade Del Rey so often culls from for her own lyrical landscapes), the “brooding” “bad boy” dissected in such ditties is often not worth dissecting at all—because he’s just an asshole, full-stop. No further analysis required. But to someone as young and impressionable as Harley, who got into the heroin “scene” because of Ilya to begin with (sounds a lot like Amy Winehouse with Blake Fielder-Civil, don’t it?), there is a litany of “viable” excuses for such behavior. “He’s really sensitive on the inside” or “He’s so brilliant and misunderstood,” etc., etc. Holmes herself met the real Ilya when she was in her teenage years, trying heroin for the first time with him when she was seventeen (“only seventeen/But she walks the streets so mean,” as Lana would describe).

    Despite the abyssal spiral Harley falls down because of her dependency on both heroin and Ilya’s love, she echoes the Del Reyian sentiment, “And I love your women and all of your heroin,” as well as, “Creeping around while he gets high, it might not be something you would do” or even, “It hurts to love you/But I still love you.” But where Heaven Knows What is meant to be an unglamorous portrait of life as a drug-addicted lovefool, Del Rey’s purpose in her music often feels like the opposite, with the singer herself even illustriously remarking on how she’s been accused of “glamorizing abuse,” namely in romantic relationships. As for her romanticization of drugs and “the lifestyle,” Del Rey even has a song called “Heroin,” from her 2017 album, Lust for Life. Speaking to her version of Ilya, an ex named Rob Dubuss, Del Rey laments, “I’m flying to the moon again/Dreaming about heroin/How it gave you everything/And took your life away.” The same can be said of Ilya, who overdoses in real life and in the movie iteration of events.

    After Harley takes up with another, more “put-together” addict named Mike (Buddy Duress), he ends up getting into an altercation with Ilya in the park. Ilya plays dirty in the fight (by throwing a makeshift morningstar crafted out of several razor blades into Mike’s hand), and, in the wake, Mike nurses his wound in an ATM vestibule with Harley. It’s there that he asks her, “You still love him though right?” “Of course,” Harley says without hesitation. Looking at her like she’s a pathetic madwoman, she continues, “I know he does fucked-up things, all right? It doesn’t matter what he does… I can’t help that I love him.” Some say that’s the very definition of love—being able to look past all the horrid aspects of a person (e.g., Eva Braun with Hitler). And, thanks to how magical it’s all made to seem despite the torture in movies and literature, that’s what many non-fictional characters believe, too.

    Mike persists in poking a hole in Harley’s so-called love for Ilya by demanding, “You think you’re gonna be in love with him forever?” She says with certainty, “I know I will be.” Again, this channels the Del Reyian panache of a song like “Blue Jeans,” wherein she declares, “I will love you till the end of time/Probably a million years.” For a brief moment in the third act of Heaven Knows What, we think maybe Harley might get her wish for a love that lasts “till the end of time” as she rejoins with Ilya and the two buy bus tickets bound for Florida (it’s always Florida with New Yorkers). Naturally, Ilya feels obliged to break up the happy reunion for no reason other than a whim (likely based on needing to shoot up without sharing). So it is that he talks the driver into letting him off the bus, leaving Harley behind without a second thought. In many respects, the portion of the film that ensues reminds one of Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, with the similarly street-bound Wren (Susan Berman) finding herself walking along a highway, of sorts (read: the George Washington Bridge), totally lost as to what to do next without the man she had briefly secured in her life. Along the route, a lecherous driver keeps hounding Wren to get in the car, finally clinching the “proposition” with, “Got a better place to spend your time?” Wren looks back at that moment with a look of recognition on her face, as though it’s suddenly dawned on her that, no, she doesn’t.

    A comparable look appears on Harley’s face when she finds herself back at a Dunkin’ Donuts sitting amid Mike and his cronies, the former regaling them with some bullshit story. The question Mike had demanded of her previously in the ATM vestibule then comes to mind: “You just wanna be his woman your whole life? Don’t you wanna be your own person?” In the end, that’s what Holmes had to become in order to save herself from the same fate as Ilya’s. As for what became of Harley, it seems she reached that exploding point in her relationship manifested by the conclusion to “We Found Love.” Only to lose it almost as quickly as it arrived. But as it is said, “Easy come…painful as fuck go.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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