Love Streams (1984)

It was wonderful seeing John Cassavetes and wife Gena Rowlands play brother and sister, each with serious sanity issues, in 'Love Streams' (I had only previously seen them together in the stellar 'Opening Night', my favourite Cassavetes film), from a script he co-wrote with the author of the 1980 stage play, Ted Allan (Cassavetes' character, Robert Harmon, was originally played by Jon Voight on stage). While his earliest film, 'Shadows', is least pleasing to me simply because I don't feel his cast there was of the quality necessary to handle that large degree of spontaneity and improvisation, by two decades later, he had refined (and perhaps perfected) his approach, and it's a great day for the two stars as well as stock company mainstay Seymour Cassel, who's always a treat to see. I strongly urge that if you have a sibling you love but currently have problems relating with, to take the time, watch the film with them, and learn something about yourself. This is probably the finest moment of Golan-Globus Films as well...

I have watched this movie many times over the years. As with all of Cassavetes movies, repeated viewing improves it. This is a good solid effort with a great final image of Cassavetes waving goodbye (both to Sarah & to us). - An interesting character study of a brother & sister. Nothing actually gets resolved during the course of the movie. We just get to watch these two characters for awhile. Both characters are just as messed up at the end as they were at the start.As much as I like the movie, I wouldn't go overboard raving about it. I recognize that it isn't perfect. I think that the opera dream sequence at the end of the picture is kind of annoying. However, on the positive side, it avoids including the bad acting that mar some of Cassavetes other movies.

I saw "Love Streams" in Madrid, this past summer in the "Filmoteca Nacional" inside the retrospective of Cassavetes and I was so impacted that I started to search this film, like a crazy. Cassavetes plays a very hard character making a depressed and empty of love man, a looser. And Gena also plays a wonderful character: his dizzy sister. Imprescindible, wonderful, winner with the "Golden Bear" and Cassavetes plays the best character i've ever seen in my life. Please, if you listen this film, see it and search films of Cassavetes. The best of Cassavetes is 1º: Love Streams, 2º: Husbands and 3º: Faces. His way of work allows him to transmit us a lot of feelings. Casssavetes knew that he would probably left a few months to die and he shots his own death and, making us to reflex into the human been. I cried a lot

One of the Great American directors (directing and starring in his last great film) with his wonderful Gena Rowlands told an American tale as old as the Hollywood hills in the dreaded 80's film wash-out era. Check it - a writer who lives with a bunch of beautiful "hookers, babes, whoever these chicks are" while he gets his stuff together while his unhappily married sister (G. Rowlands) is having a bad decade, you have the beginning of a story.The plot alone with some wonderful performances by bit players and some clueless extras and a kid that Cassavets has scenes with (like he did in Marvin and Tige; just acting) that are VERY REAL and so non mainstream, I can't believe this wasn't a HIT in the mid 80's. I've been a film buff for 37 years and this should be shown at Christmas, instead of that horrifying Jimmy Stewart "It's a Wonderful Life" bad want-to-be Rod Serling story about Americans and their foibles. Check this out, even if you're not a Cassavetes fan. It will be well worth your time and effort and Gena Rowlands is wonderful in it. 9 out of 10.