Love Streams

Cassavetes knew where he stood while making this: no company would insure him for another film. In one of the closing shots he looks directly into the camera and waves. The crew read it as a goodbye, and it was. The funding is the unexpected part. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the Cannon Films operation behind the cheap action pictures of the 1980s, put Cassavetes to work on this. The screenplay, by Ted Allan and Cassavetes, comes from Allan's play. The subject is a brother and sister. Robert Harmon is a writer who researches books by living with women; Sarah Lawson is losing a divorce case and her daughter. She arrives at his house and two wrecked people try to carry each other for a while. Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands play the siblings. It won the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI prize at Berlin in 1984. Who it is for: viewers who want Cassavetes's whole method one last time, in its most exposed form. Who it is not for: anyone new to this director. It is long, its scenes connect by emotional pressure rather than logic, and some passages stop being narrative altogether.