Love me or leave me alone - Analysis

Love me or leave me alone is a film which I feel is a little bit pointless but fairly inaccurate in it's portrayal of a young love. The film's narrative shows a young couple having a fall out, and making up again. A very simple story delivered with great and sometimes stunning cinematography.

I felt that the portrayal of the male character as a bully was uncomfortable and not clever at all. I did not enjoy the opening scene because of the seemingly unnecessary violence towards the boy's girlfriend. The ending was also disappointing as I would have liked to see the girl not forgive him so easily. I think the message of the film was wrong to be honest, I feel that the film would be more successful if the girl character had not forgiven the boy so easily. The boy doesn't pay for his actions and seeing this in a short film almost promotes aggressiveness towards women which is wrong and not very pleasant to see, not that I think that all film should be pleasant, I just think that this particular film was unsuccessful.

I did not think that everything about Love me or leave me alone was bad. The cinematography was brilliant at times. The framing of certain shots was stunning, for example in the opening scene a lot of the shots were very 'square' with characters central in the frame with the background very plain. The shot towards the end by the level crossing, I thought was fantastic as the couple were completely surrounded by darkness and they were doused in a very orange light, I thought this was visually very stunning. Also the cut just before the barrier fully closed, I thought was clever. A lot of the editing was also very successful. The jump cuts in the first scene really created a sense of aggression and panic, representing the feelings of the characters in the fight. Another example of good editing was the sex scene where two shots were constantly being cut together, both very different shots; one of the couple kissing very still and the other of them having sex and moving a lot. I felt that this was a great piece of editing as it showed two sides to their relationship at the same time.

Overall, I felt that Love me or leave me alone was very impressive to look at but the subject matter was thin and the message was not very good. The cinematography greatly surpassed the narrative's clumsiness.