Love, Spells and All That

Love, Spells and All That has a great premise. It also has a consistent sense of its own identity and tone. It just so happens that said tone was joyless magical realism. Personally, this is not my favourite way to tell any story, really. But I’m just some faceless idiot on the internet. I’ve made exactly zero feature films myself so what do I know?

The film begins as Eren returns to track down her teen fling, Reyhan. Eren passionately declares that she’s been in love with Reyhan for the past two decades. Eren’s declaration doesn’t impress Reyhan at all. Her declarations of their girlhood connection and the love she still feels doesn’t match with Reyhan’s perception of events. If nothing else, why would Eren wait 20 years to get in contact if she’s been in love this whole time? Then, Reyhan remembers something. 20 years ago, she’d cast a love spell on Eren. At the time, it didn’t seem to work. But 20 years on, the spell caster Reyhan met has recently died and that seems to correlate with Eren’s reappearance. Along the path to getting the spell undone, Reyhan develops real feelings for Eren. Meanwhile, Eren maintains all along that her love is genuine and not borne of decades old magic.

To start, this is a really cool premise for a movie. A love spell can be a complicated relationship dynamic and certainly one I haven’t seen before in WLW films. The film does its due diligence of actually exploring the ramifications and dynamic this would bring about really well. Eren and Reyhan have well-drawn characters and lives outside of this one potentially magical occurrence. But the focus of the film is absolutely tracking this fairly bizarre relationship as it develops and changes.

What I was missing from Love, Spells and All That’s depiction of a love spell was any sense of joy or fun. I know it’s basically in the name but damn, why does magical realism always have to be a no fun allowed genre? The film is grounded so heavily in realism that it sucks some of the magic out of the premise. I didn’t necessarily need this to be a comedy or high fantasy, but the film is not only often depressing but occasionally boring. It’s rare that the characters fully acknowledge how bizarre and potentially amusing this situation is.

The film’s commitment to realism extends to the directing. There’s a lot of long, often wide, uninterrupted shots and lengthy conversations that don’t exactly advance the plot. I was surprised at how often Eren and Reyhan would spend entire scenes not talking about the whole the love spell situation. Again, it’s good as this makes the characters feel fully rounded and realistic. But when the magical element is minimized as much as it often is, why use it at all?

This review really boils down to the fact that I’m not a huge fan of magical realism. If I want to watch a serious relationship drama, I’ll do so. But if the premise of the movie involves a damn love spell, I’d like a bit more excitement, joy or humour than what’s on offer in Love, Spells and All That. I do understand that more than usual, this is a subjective review. If magical realism is a genre you’re interested in, this is a pretty good example of it. The magic is present but minimal. The characters are the priority of the story and nobody smiles all that much. It’s not my personal favourite but maybe that’s because a witch cursed me with a hating magical realism hex back in 2006.

Overall rating: 5.4/10

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