Addicted to Love
We all know how terrible it feels when a loved one breaks up with you: the disappointment, the rage, the standing around in your underwear until four o'clock in the afternoon, too dazed to leave the house. But when they leave you for someone else - suddenly, your life has been energized! Call it "checking up" or call it "stalking", either way, you're obsessed. Addicted to Love explores this theme; it is a movie for anyone who has ever wondered if Radio Shack carries the tools to tap a phone line.
You probably wouldn't go to the lengths that Sam and Maggie (Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan) do, but there's enough bitter jealousy in everyone to make the duo's obsessive actions seem just this side of insane. First time director Griffin Dunne knows when to push the characters past credibility for comic effect, and when to reel them in for emotional punch.
The premise is a fresh and funny one: Sam is jilted by his girlfriend Linda (Kelly Preston) who flies to New York to live with suave Frenchman Anton (Tcheky Karyo). Sam follows her in desperation, and begins spying on them from an abandoned warehouse across the street. In a Peeping Tom frenzy, the neurotic astronomer sets up a complex series of lenses to create a camera obscura, a fascinating little invention that projects the images of his love onto a wall for Sam to watch in living color.
Who should drop in on this compulsive wizardry but Maggie, Anton's former lover who is just as obsessed as Sam. The two combine their voyeuristic talents to break up the happy couple and in the process, fall in love themselves. And why not? They certainly have enough in common.
It's nice to see two perennially "nice" actors playing such depraved, disturbed characters. Borderick is great as the moon-eyed, unshaven puppy dog boyfriend; Ryan shines as the bitter, cynical alterna-chick bent on Anton's humiliation. Karyo himself manages to make Anton both despicable and sympathetic as Preson's love interest.
A clever, dark study of obsession taken too far (but not so far as to lose sight of the innate humor of the situation), Addicted to Love is a winner. Bring your spyglasses and enjoy.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker