plug: Pretend That You Love Me (2020)
"What do you need?"
Welcome to today’s plug, a quick recommendation of an oft-forgotten film, cult classic, or movie that is dying to be rewatched // We send plugs every Tuesday + Thursday //
In the last few years I’ve become more invested in finding microbudget independent films that people are making and putting on the internet. COVID has accelerated Hollywood’s inevitable demise, and it’s clearer than ever that the future of film belongs to the people.
One of those people is Joel Haver, who made three feature-length films this year and put them all on his YouTube channel. Pretend That You Love Me, his most recent feature, is a truly exceptional achievement of modern microbudget guerrilla filmmaking, and something you could only make if you’re in a position to make movies the way Haver makes them. It’s the most emotionally stunning and technically innovative film I’ve seen this year, and Hollywood couldn’t have pulled off anything close to it in a million years with all the money and talent in the world.
Check out the Letterboxd reviews for this film and you’ll see pretty quickly how hard it is to describe. There’s clearly a lot of Haver’s real life being captured in the film as its happening, but it’s intricately interwoven with fiction in a way that reveals itself to you over time. It’s so conceptually bold and original that I’m honestly still not sure where the fiction ends and the captured reality of Haver’s life begins. What I do know is that the slow-burn, step-by-step reveal of Pretend That You Loved Me’s story and emotional pull is a revelatory and expansive trip.
If all of this sounds pretentious or unnecessarily vague, please excuse my inefficiency in describing something this new and exciting and just take a chance on it. I’ll go so far as to say if you watch one goddamn movie I’ve recommended this year, make it Pretend That You Love Me. It’s a revolutionary piece of work about a real person struggling through fierce loneliness, illness, anxiety, and grief as we all find ourselves in the same pit of despair in 2020. To quote my favorite Letterboxd review, “I feel more and less alone because of this. Thank you”
When we’re well into the era of democratized, post-Hollywood filmmaking, I hope Pretend That You Love Me is remembered as one of the movies that ushered us all in.
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