Love Story

Love Story is a movie about making a movie. New Zealand film maker Florian Habicht won an Arts Foundation Residency to New York in 2009/10 and while he was there he decided to make a movie. He organised a couple of friends to help shoot and edit it before he had decided what it was to be and ended up making it up as he went along. When he was short of ideas he asked random New Yorkers for advice and he also consulted routinely with his Father on Skype - filming all these encounters and making them part of the movie. These encounters add charm and novelty.

The central story stars Florian himself and he's a pretty amazing character. He bears more than a passing resemblance to a flamingo, being tall and thin with a penchant for wearing pink jeans. He has a kind of sheepish openness which is moderately endearing and certainly gets impressive results in terms of contributions from the people he meets. The encounter with the woman in the cab is one of the most incredible in terms of talking round an initially hostile participant.

Florian spots a striking woman (Masha) on the subway who is carrying a piece of cake and he decides she should star in his movie which will be a love story. So he tracks her down and persuades her to participate. She's as tall and thin as he is, and has a beautiful face. The way they look together is one of the many ways this film appeals visually.

Their love story takes place on the streets of New York and in Florian's tiny apartment. At different times both Florian and Masha appear in his gray and black stripy long johns which is pretty unforgettable, but not as unforgettable as Masha eating breakfast cereal out of the dent in Florian's sternum.

Love story is quirky, original and entertaining. The key to absolutely loving it would be to be completely entranced with Florian and to be convinced that Masha was completely entranced. At the other end of the scale, there's a distinct possibility you could find Florian and his happy-go-lucky approach totally irritating and so as a result you'd probably hate the movie.

I'm between the the two extremes. I can't help but admire someone who has the guts to put their personality, their physique and their film project out on such public display. It helps that he's not hopelessly arrogant. A minor gripe is that the love story itself seems a little contrived. But there's a big bouquet for it looking like it was a lot of fun.

Anne's rating 3.5/5