Florian Habicht is making a movie.
In his movie, he locks eyes with a girl on a train, but not just any fellow traveller. Dressed – in his words – like someone out of a fairytale, she carries a single piece of cake on a plate. Instantly infatuated, he follows her to the next station and they strike a bargain – if he journeys one further stop down the line, starts walking back towards her, and they cross paths, then their meeting is written in the stars. They do not cross paths.
Habicht’s movie does not stop there, nor does it remain a simple ‘boy meets girl’ narrative. He searches for months to find the woman, asking the people of New York questions about love and life in the process. When they meet again, he returns to the citizens of the city for guidance about relationships and romance, but also about what he should do next; he asks them to write his very own Love Story.
The aptly-titled film – straddling the line between fact and fiction, and featuring Habicht and his actress/love interest Masha Yakovenko seemingly switching between staged and real versions of themselves – is the end result of Habicht’s endeavours. In his fifth effort after feature Woodenhead and documentaries Kaikohe Demolition, Rubbings from a Live Man and Land of the Long White Cloud, the German-born New Zealand writer/director simultaneously constructs a quirky rom-com and deconstructs its concept and context, in a clever, candid hybrid of drama and observation.
Though the idea could have easily worn thin despite the feature’s brief running time, the result is nothing short of delightful. The loving use of New York City as a third character in Habicht and Yakovenko’s courtship – manifested through Habicht’s chats with strangers that shape his resulting actions – is a masterstroke, at all times cute and charming rather than contrived.
With his wandering camera and out-of-the-box thinking, Habicht is definitely disarming, a trait matched by his latest film. Eliciting laughter with his winning ways, he embodies the feature both on and off the screen: affectionate, uncomplicated and unpretentious. However, it is Love Story’s love of love stories that resonates most strongly, from its Woody Allen-esque stylings to Habicht’s meta-film quest to create the ultimate example of the genre. The resulting film does not quite reach that lofty goal, but it achieves another, offering up a warm docu-romance that is utterly unique.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Love Story
Director: Florian Habicht
New Zealand, 2012, 92 min
In cinemas December 6
Distributor: Sharmill Films
Rated M
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