Valentines Day–a day when people in love are expected to express their deepest, most romantic feelings to those around them. They buy chocolates, flowers, and jewelry, and all feels right when the person you care for shows you love and affection on February 14th. However, director Danny Sapir (Henry Jaglom) has different plans for this day of love. He gathers both friends and strangers and interviews them on their ideas of love. Someone to Love explores the darkness and the pain of love, and some of the subjects of Sapir’s experiments will be profound in their statements, shedding new light on some age-old questions.
Are you in a relationship? Why?
Are you single? Why?
Are you lonely? Why?
These are just some of the questions that Jaglom (also writer and director) explores throughout the course of Someone to Love. However, when Jaglom’s Danny dives into these subjects and begins to analyze the people that are part of his Valentines Day study, he dives deep, and he refuses to settle for anything less than complete comprehension of the subject(s) at hand. It’s been said that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and that’s something that Danny clearly follows. While there is a narrative present, the purpose of Someone to Love is to analyze human behavior and emotion–and it does this wonderfully. There are so many questions answered, and I’m not sure that it matters where you’ve come from, you will see yourself in this film–and ultimately you’ll be able to better understand and appreciate yourself.
There are moments throughout Someone to Love in which the scenarios feel a bit hyperreal–this happens when the things being said by the various subjects on screen feel conflicted by the emotions of the individuals speaking about them. However, there are moments when things don’t feel scripted as well–times when the dialogue and conversation feel legitimate. There’s somewhat of a balance between the two, but I still struggle to appreciate those hyperreal moments. It can be hard to sit with a group of strangers and freely express yourself, but nearly everyone is able to do this with ease throughout the course of Someone to Love. These moments feel unrealistic, and it’s hard to accept what I feel is too exaggerated.
Regardless of the situation, hyperreal or seemingly unscripted, the acting throughout Someone to Love is fantastic. Even in the moments when I questioned the validity of what had been scripted for the actors, I found myself believing the things they said, pulled into their orbit, and eventually feeling emotionally connected to them. The two actors that resonated with me the most were Andrea Marcovicci (Helen Eugene) and Michael Emil (Mickey Sapir). Both actors do a wonderful job of conveying emotion and developing the tone of the film. While everyone around them does a wonderful job, it’s these two that are most successful in their endeavors.
Someone to Love is a film about a director, and with that viewers likely expect that the cinematography be done with some level of expertise. That comes to fruition early in the film. The camera angles capture everything throughout each and every one of the conversations, and the often up-close-and-personal nature of many of the shots captures the emotion present on the faces of the many characters. This feels like a work of art and a character study wrapped into one beautiful package. It makes sense that this is a film about a director putting together film footage, and the expertise needed throughout Someone to Love is perfectly representative of what a seasoned director might create.
What feels like the film’s climax (even though I don’t believe it actually is)–a discussion between Danny and his friend (Orson Welles)–sums up Someone to Love. They touch on these deep, meaningful topics, topics of race, slavery, feminism, and homosexuality, in ways that I’ve never once heard them touched on. The intellectual integrity of this discussion almost makes you want to cry–it’s incredible, meaningful, and full of passion. I wish that more people were capable of sitting down and having a discussion like this without jumping down each other's throats, but I feel that it is a sad reality that this is no longer common practice. This is such a moving piece of Someone to Love. Occasionally you feel thankful that you’ve been able to take part in something, this scene is something I’m thankful for–it’s everything it needs to be and more. Ultimately, that’s what Someone to Love is as well, a moving piece of art that touches the hearts and souls of viewers everywhere; and through Jaglom’s filmmaking and anthropological expertise, this beautiful film comes to life.
Written & Directed by Henry Jaglom.
Starring Henry Jaglom, Andrea Marcovicci, Michael Emil, Sally Kellerman, Oja Kodar, Stephen Bishop, David Frishberg, Orson Welles, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
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