Endless Love (1981)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) Considering that an endless loop of “Endless Love” is the soundtrack of my nightmares, I really couldn’t wait until Endless Love (the movie) had run its course. Taking teenage romance to an obnoxious melodramatic intensity seldom seen elsewhere in fiction, this film features an obsessed male lead taking wilder and more dangerous steps to be with a particular girl, with devastating consequences. This is a film with several significant problems, but the biggest is probably a fundamental disconnect between its romantic and thriller elements. There’s an attempt her to recast a dangerously obsessive protagonist as a romantic hero and it really just doesn’t work. In fact, it’s so incongruous that at some point it’s justifiable to ask pointed questions about the filmmakers themselves and whether they’re being stupid or disingenuous in shaping the film to its final form. In any other movie, having a young man lust over a girl, setting fire to her house, going to a mental institution, being seduced by her mom, killing her father, pursuing her to Vermont and fighting her brother (even in a series of accidents) would be seen as, well, an outright villain. Or most likely a dark comedy if handled by sufficiently skillful filmmakers. Here, we’re close to full-on apologia at the protagonist just being romantic, up to and including her coming back to him at the end. You don’t need to look any further to understand how weird early-1980s films could be. It sounds like a nightmare when summarized, and it doesn’t feel any better when experienced one minute at a time. Except that you then spend two hours wondering what quirk of upbringing, touch of psychopathology or outright misanthropy from director Franco Zeffirelli would lead to such a badly ill-advised film. It’s this close to self-parody as it is that I wouldn’t mind someone actually taking one step further and making an actual parody out of it. Maybe they can even get a cameo from Tom Cruise, who here appears for the first time in a small but pivotal role.