Love is Love is Love

Covering the Deauville American Film Festival often means discovering or rediscovering, in this case, directors who are making independent cinema an important means of expression or personal exploration. In this case, Eleanor Coppola, wife of illustrious director Francis Ford Coppola and mother of Sofia Coppola is living proof that her daughter has inherited her father's immense talent to our great joy and not his own, as this film proves to be a total purge more worthy of a second half evening TV movie than a successful and interesting film.

Divided into three different stories, the first one between living part of the year at a distance (the husband working in the cinema and often close to the filming location), the one of a retired couple on a boat reminiscing about their illustrious past or the eve of a funeral where friends and the daughter of the deceased are gathered around a table everything here sounds fake and hardly saved by really inspired actors. It is easy to understand that the name Coppola is associated with quality cinema and this film is a complete false note. It is also understandable that being a director in this case implies having a real desire to give life to a work and not to do it for a simple matter of personal occupation.

Eleanor Coppola's previous films have gone unnoticed apart from her excellent documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991). We understand better why by discovering this film which does not really have its place in official competition at the Deauville American Film Festival.

Love is Love is Love
Directed by Eleanor Coppola
Produced by Anahid Nazarian, Adriana Rotaru
Written by Eleanor Coppola, Karen Leigh Hopkins
Starring Maya Kazan, Joanne Whalley, Chris Messina, Kathy Baker, Marshall Bell, Cybill Shepherd, Rita Wilson, Rosanna Arquette, Polly Draper, Alyson Reed, Valarie Pettiford, Elea Oberon, Nancy Carlin
Music by Laura Karpman
Cinematography: Hiro Narita, Toby Irwin, Mihai M?laimare Jr.
Edited by Robert Schafer
Production companies; American Zoetrope
Running time: 88mns

Seen on September 7, 2020 at the Centre International de Deauville

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