Love Story

Overview

Is Love Story the first crowd-written film? Indie filmmakers have been financing their projects directly from fans for a while, but this pseudo-documentary rom com credits “the people of New York City” as screenwriters.

Affable, skinny-jeaned Kiwi, Florian Habicht, sees a beautiful young woman, Masha, on the streets of New York. He misses his chance to get her number, but can’t forget her. Armed with a steadycam and a gutload of courage, he asks regular New Yorkers what he should do. The suggestions of strangers prompt his next moves and the development of the romance.

What emerges is less of a love story and more of a testimony to the fact that Americans will truly say and do anything on camera. But this film’s directive isn’t realism or even true love. It's cleverness and kitsch, of the stripey socks and frosted cupcake variety. It’s all pretty meta: in these post-everything times, Love Story takes the idea of a film within a film, and rewrites it on the fly. It doesn’t work like Hollywood and it doesn’t work all the time. But it’s so sweet and silly and earnest, and goofy Florian is such an entertaining host, that the film’s foibles are forgivable — just. Love Story is a fun and admirable cinematic experiment - the trick is not to think too much.