Product: Endless Love [VHS] (1981)
Rating: 1.0
BOUNDLESS INFATUATION
This film is inconsistent in many ways. Set up as a forbidden love story between two teen agers bitterly opposed by the father of the girl, the film stops making sense that you realize that the girl's family is supposed to be a bunch of progressive ex-hippies who encourage their children to experiment and hold wildest parties on the block. Why hate the kid when he is trying so desperately to become part of the clan? The enemy number two is the girl's brother, who happens to be this guy's best friend who introduced him to his sister in the first place!Beyond that the film starts falling apart. Father forbids them to see each other for a month because of the girl's failing grades, and the kid goes bonkers and sets the house on fire. The obvious question is, why aren't they talking in school, and what sort of friendship is it that can't survive a thirty day separation? Unless the guy is obssessed with the girl and the girl is not interested.Whatever merits the original novel had got lost in this screen adaptation. No reason for the attraction is given, nor does the film show any relationship between the two beyond sexual attraction. The girl's folks are not at all recognizable as former hippies, but you can definitely see traces of old world aristocracy in them, with the duck hunting and with pretensions to preppiness and upper classdom, why then did they introduce the kid to the girl in the first place, by a jealous brother no less???Finally, the film disgisted me because the guy is clearly a stalker and the girl is objectified, and the whole affair is shown as GREAT LOVE! On a couple of occasions the guy forces himself on the unwilling girl and they explode into passionate lovemaking. In the final analysis the message in the film validates every stalker in that the object of their obssession will yield to them in the end if only they get through to her against all odds and against all reason. Except in this story the stalker is the hero and a victim.