Unrequited Love (2005) dir. Chris Petit

Based on an English academic’s memoir on stalking and being stalked, Unrequited Love is a dazzling digital film essay on cinema and absence, on Hitchcock and Antonioni, on cinema and cities. It is a story of waiting, self-delusion, panic, fear of violence, and of modern technologies which define the urban stalker as they do the new terrorist. Their methods duplicate: both are irrational and targeted. Stalking operates in the borders between normal love and pathological fantasy, and wants nothing better than to move in and close the gap. Stalking is radical, stalking is anti-bourgeois, stalking is the black economy of the heart. Stalking is an externalised form of self-destruction, as fanciful as any Hollywood confection, without the possibility of a happy ending. Stalking is the erotic impulse pushed to the point of principle, narrowing the distance between love and death, leaving no room for manoeuvre. Stalkers are the fundamentalists of love. Unrequited Love is a love story in long shot. A world lacking any reverse angle because its story is defined by absence. At its heart is the lurking assumption of false intimacy. A black valentine. Directed and filmed by Chris Petit, this film is based on English academic Gregory Dark’s memoir on stalking and being stalked. Stalking operates in the borders between normal love and pathological fantasy, and wants nothing better than to move in and close the gap. Stalking is radical, stalking is anti-bourgeois, stalking is the black economy of the heart. Stalking is an externalised form of self-destruction, as fanciful as any Hollywood confection, without the possibility of a happy ending. Stalking is the erotic impulse pushed to the point of principle, narrowing the distance between love and death, leaving no room for manoeuvre. Petit’s unique, essayist film style is difficult to capture in a few words. He introduces discrepancies between image, music and sound, uses extreme wide-angle shots from impersonal security cameras and close-ups of action, makes post-modern use of other people’s texts , with which he evokes a mood of alienation, confusion and passion in a possibly inhuman world. Chris Petit: ’What a film is about and how I film it are the same: subject dictates style.I like films that show a process; here, the emotional transfer between stalker and stalked.’ Unrequited Love is a dazzling film essay on cinema and absence, on Hitchcock and Antonioni, on cinema and cities. It is a story of waiting, self-delusion, panic, fear of violence, and of modern technologies which define the urban stalker as they do the new terrorist. Their methods duplicate: both are irrational and targeted. “My favorite feature-length experimental video by Chris Petit..“ Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader “Unusual, challenging and thought-provoking; positive and encouraging qualities in these increasingly dumbed-down days.“ Slarek, DVD Outsider Extras are good half hour interviews with Petit and Gregory Dart