Lions Love (... and Lies)

Lion's Love is a pseudo-documentary with no concrete direction. It asks us to be voyeurs of three people who define cavalierism.. An oddly fascinating look at late 60's America via the very french Varda. Hard to recommend, but cineastes of new-wave/non-linear film will love it. Worth noting for a cameo by James Douglas Morrison as a theater patron.

I saw this movie on German TV probably in 1971. It was fascinating to me. It seemed like a documentary about the 60s lifestyle fizzling out against the background of upscale Hollywood actors pretending to be hippies keeping the experiment going. That was actually happening to many people who worked in the creative field at the time. The innocent 60s dream was dying and politically motivated violence took over that couldn't be ignored. The 1970s was like waking up from a nice dream only to discover that reality became a nightmare. Artists lost their sense of direction. Didn't know whether to create a bubble and preserve the dream, or adjust to the stark realities of the 70s. This movie captured the threshold of this transition. The 60s experiment became boring, which the movie also captured. What was once outrageous and ground breaking became a yawn. The bourgeoisie was no longer upset about witnessing communes, topless women, and shameless living arrangements. That has been digested by society already. The underground has been normalized by Hollywood. All that's left is Hollywood living its own myth. That's what seems to be happening with Vargas' characters. They live in their happy bubble while the world was falling apart in the TV's news reports, the dawn of the 70s. Vargas' character came to Hollywood to make a movie about Hollywood society in their time, only to discover all movies covering this subject have already been made, or it's simply too late to capture anything worthwhile. The last hooray of the 60s was probably Woodstock and Essy Rider, that were just about to happen when Vargas made this movie. Hollywood missed the 60s almost entirely. If it wasn't for Corman getting some movies like The Trip made, Hollywood might have skipped the 60s going straight from the 50s into the 70s. The 70s gave us Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg, who changed Hollywood forever. Just like Hollywood skipped the 60s, Vargas skipped Hollywood never to return.

Agnes Varda smiled at me! The director was present at the showing of this film (with her 1982 short Ulysse shown beforehand), and she described the historical background of Lions Love (about two feet from my face!). This was her only film made in America, and it's very much influenced by the cinematic court of Andy Warhol. Lions Love stars Warhol model Viva and two men, James Rado and Gerome Ragni (the creators of the musical Hair) as a spiritually linked threesome living in L.A. Filmmaker Shirley Clarke crashes at their apartment, having come to L.A. to meet with producers. To sum the film up, it's late '60s garbage. Sorry to say it, but it is. Mostly improvised, with a lot of goofy, goofy scenes. Warhol and his cronies are almost completely forgotten, at least the cinematic section of it. I would guess that this was just one of a hundred films made in a similar style during this period. My only point of reference is the 1972 film Ciao! Manhattan, which depicts the toppling of Warhol's most famous protege, Edie Sedgwick. That film, I think, is a masterpiece, despite of or because of its cinema verite insanity. Lions Love is much less interesting, and it never reaches an emotional level like Ciao! Manhattan does. Still, Lions Love isn't worthless. It may be garbage, but it is amusing garbage. This is probably due to my youthful interest surrounding the late 1960s, and most who lived through the era would probably find the film insufferable. And it does find a structural anchor, if not an emotional one, in the assassination of Robert Kennedy, as well as the attempted murder of Andy Warhol. If the film depicts the events factually (and, from what Madame Varda seemed to imply, these things happened as they were making the film), those two events happened on the same day. 6/10.

If we were to debate about French filmmakers who have made successful films in Hollywood,it would appear that Agnès Varda is certainly not the first person from France who made a film in Hollywood.There were many people before her including great French master Jean Renoir who made films which had favorable outcome in Hollywood.What is important to note is that her films based in Hollywood gained more popularity as she and her husband Jacques Demy were close to American cultural icon Andy Warhol.This is also the case with her film "Lions Love" in which she makes attempts to understand working style of Hollywood people.The highlight of the film is her quest to fathom how American films get their finances in a tough jungle called Hollywood.Lions Love is also a tale of reflections of a French lady on American events of the time as there is a significant mention of the assassination of American president John.F.Kennedy.Those who are looking for traces of feminism found in other films by Agnès Varda would be highly disappointed as Lions Love is very much a light work in terms of its filming style and theme.

The movie is totally a waste of precious time unless you are a great fan of any of the actors involved or like to see news clips of the 60's in California. The best part is the first part of the movie showing a scene out of a play "the Beard" with Billie Dixon and Richard Bright, but that is just about all you are going to see of Richard Bright. There seems to be no structure, no set script. I think anybody could have done a better job with other wanna be actors and a camcorder. I cant believe they wasted so much time on a scene where they were too lazy to get out of bed to order or make coffee. At the end you will be slapping yourself in the face either to wake yourself up or to scold yourself for the fact that you watched the whole thing from beginning to end.