Love and Confusion

The six friends in When Love Comes hang on to music, drugs, and one another in search of that one intoxifier they don't have: love. Middle-age pop diva Katie (Rena Owen) is trying to put her singing career on track; she was once a great star of late '70s Americana (read: she was a guest on shows such as The Love Boat). She joins forces with lesbian punk-rock duo Fig and Sally (Nancy Brunning and Sophia Hawthorne), who play the songs written by Mark (the gorgeous Dean O'Gorman), whose love Katie's best friend, Stephen (Simon Prast), can't quite tie up. The emotional core of this New Zealand mood piece belongs to Stephen, who's trying to figure out what to do about the substance-abusing wild-child lover who keeps rushing in and out of his life. Writer-director Garth Maxwell aims for, and often achieves, the emotional texture of Michelangelo Antonioni, which is a far cry from his day job as one of the main movers and shakers behind the Hercules and Xena television series. Maybe in twenty years we'll get another film following the trials of a middle-age pop diva trying to recover her reputation from those late '90s gems.