The Loveless (1982)

After she was the first woman to win the academy award this year for best director, I became curious about Kathryn Bigelow. She started out as a painter studying at The San Francisco Institute of Art and went to New York for the Whitney Musuem Independent Study Program before studying film at Columbia. Influenced by existentialism, Jacques Lacan and Derrida, she also worked on contruction jobs with Phillip Glass.

The Loveless is her first feature film. Curious that her source of inspiration in the early 1980s was classic biker films, such as The Wild One (1953) and Scorpio Rising (1964). She also mentions another inspiration as Written in the Wind (1956) starring Rock Hudson. I plan to watch that one soon. Originally titled US 17, the distributors made her change it.


Starring a very young Willem Defoe as Vance, part of a biker gang on route to Datona Beach, Florida. They stop in small southern towns along the way finding all kinds of trouble. The film tagline is "Sworn to fun loyal to none." Vance says things like "Go bark at the moon" and "We're going nowhere fast." There is blinking neon and Coca Cola machines. The aesthetic and look of the film is late 1950s America, around the time of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. ten years before Easy Rider.

I know she has been known for her action films, a genre that is not usually what I like to watch so I will not be checking out the others. I can't say I liked this film. I was examining it more than enjoying it. Although, having just seen Willem Defoe in an intense role with Charlotte Gainsbourg in the 2009 film Antichrist, it was interesting to watch him nearly thirty years ago, as his style has been consistant.