True Love Ways (2014) Online

A grind-house revenge exploitation movie though an art-house lens. Though artificial black and white cinematography is generally irritating, it suits the dreamlike and visually intense atmosphere of this film. But the abstraction and tastefulness cause any horror to lose much its immediacy, and the movie is as infused with boredom as with monochrome. A review describing even the basic plot is therefore spoiling some of its scarce impact. In this sicko's opinion there is also an insufficient amount of nudity for the plot: the most obscene imagery is a closeup of tape being removed from lips. But Anna Hausburg is enjoyable to watch, and the film is well-crafted.

I really love this movie. It has a wonderful timeless, nostalgic feel played out in B&W. The mise en scene is evocative of French cinema, with Roman Polanski and David Lynch notes lifted by the hit recording by Buddy Holly. Everything in the mise en scene of this movie evokes both a feeling of unease and charm. It is beautiful, and yet disturbing, and somehow this delicate combination lifts it into a work of artistic merit in terms of cinema-photography and film-making.

Severine (Anna Hausburg) is moody and has weird dreams. She wants some "me" time away from her boyfriend Tom (Kai Michael Müller). Tom goes to the bar and laments his woes to any stranger who will listen and one does. He will kidnap Severine and Tom will rescue her. When her car runs out of gas, this puts a kink into the plan and midpoint plot spoiler...the guys make rape/snuff films and need a pretty female lead for a role of a lifetime. Severine uses the hatchet she is pictured with on the cover to do some editing.

The film is cultish, filmed in black and white, steeped with odd scenes, I thought I was watching Ingmar Berman making a film combining "I Spit on Your Grave" and "The Story of O" a German version of acid horror. I wish they had colorized the red blood, like on the DVD cover. I don't know why I gave the film 4 stars anymore than if I had given it 1 star. I am still trying to work the scenes out in my head. It could be genius or just crap.

Guide: F-word. Rape. Butt nudity.

TRUE LOVE WAYS is an art-house horror movie from Germany that suffers from a very low budget and a general lack of direction. I'm always ready to turn off when I go to watch a modern movie and see it shot in black and white with a dream-like atmosphere, which screams pretentiousness, and this film is no exception.

The running time is overlong and the story is light and all too airy. It's about an unhappy couple who decide to spice up their relationship and prove their love to each other by employing a third party to bring some danger into their lives. Unfortunately through various twists it all goes wrong, badly wrong. Sadly, TRUE LOVE WAYS is too subtle and insubstantial to prove the least bit memorable. There's no faulting the acting, but it all seems directionless, like a boat lost at sea without a rudder.

"True Love Ways" is a German German-language movie from last year (2015). Do not be fooled by the English title, there is no English-language in here. The writer and director is Swiss filmmaker Mathieu Seiler and this film from him we have here is his most known work so far without a doubt. The film is entirely in black-and-white during its 105 minutes runtime and I am not too sure why they went with that creative decision. It may have been to make it a bit more artistically looking and to keep it from being too violent and there is some blood in here, but you never see the red color. Or maybe it is a homage to film noir. Who knows. Anyway, this is the story of a young couple. The woman apparently wants to leave her boyfriend after a strange dream and the boyfriend randomly meets a stranger at a bar who suggests him that he could abduct the girl. Then the boyfriend comes to the rescue and he is her hero again. The boyfriend accepts the offer. But this is not even half of the movie. Not even close, maybe 30 minutes max. And this is also when the film gets worse. As they are moving on with their plan, we find out that the "kind helper" has actually very different plans. He and his gang keep abducting young women, abuse them, film them and eventually kill them and this is where the horror/thriller element really comes into play. Unlucky coincidence for the female protagonist I guess as for roughly half of the film she gets chased around by these gentlemen. Strangely enough, she manages to injure them and even kill them one by one like some German Bride from Kill Bill. The film had nothing to do with realism at that point anymore. And just when you accept to enjoy it as an unrealistic and pointless horror guilty pleasure, the last 10 minutes (after she got away) are when the film hits rock-bottom. They really tried to make it impactful, artistic and creative, almost beautifully-looking at that point, and it wasn't working at all. Like the entire plot twist towards the end or that she, in fact, got away. This is quite a shame I must say. With the first somewhat interesting 30 minutes, there was potential for much more in here. But the longer the film went and the more the story took a turn for the absurd, the less I found myself enjoying it. Maybe it could have been nice at a short film about the initial plot idea with a runtime of 40 minutes or under. But as a full feature film that is closer to 2 hours than to 1.5 hours, it is certainly not worth seeing. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended. Maybe I'd also have enjoyed it more if I found the lead actress more attractive physically. as she is really in almost every scene from start to finish, except the bar scene early on.