“I began my seduction strategy the next day,” says Mike (Jason Scott), the well-meaning protagonist of The Love Garden, writer and director Mark Haggard’s debut effort for executive producer Bob Chinn and producer Roland Miller from 1971. And with but thirty minutes left in the film, the audience should want him to succeed in bedding down Claire (Linda York) as it’s been his mission throughout the entire picture. But, surprisingly, the audience wants him to fail because, in what might have been a shocker to those who wanted to see some cheap exploitation, the audience is made to care about what happens to the characters in The Love Garden because the film itself cares.
The Love Garden opens on Mike as he first spots Claire poolside at his apartment complex. She is there with Inez (Barbara Mills), her lover. But Mike’s thunderstruck love for Claire keeps him blinded to the fact that the two women are a couple. Later, Mike runs into Claire in the laundry room where they have a meet-cute that plays out like a Tide commercial with some light banter regarding sexual politics. He tries his best to get her to go out with him but no dice. Eventually, their relationship will blossom but not without some emotional consequences for all three of the players in the human drama that unfolds.
Much like Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy if it were a good movie, The Love Garden explores the conflicting, sometimes tricky feelings that form when someone develops feelings for another person who has had uniquely different emotional and sexual experiences and preferences that have led to broader and more complex horizons. But unlike a lot of films that try to take that kind of material out for a stroll, The Love Garden never steps wrong or makes a hamfisted observation during its entire running time. This is a movie that is much more concerned with the human emotions of its characters as it is the flesh that is on display. Also, it is a serious-minded drama in which the woman uses the man (for once) and everything ends in heartache for everyone, but maturely and realistically so.
With his clean, uncomplicated style, Haggard isn’t much telling a story as he chooses to let the characters in The Love Garden play the story out naturally. But Haggard is adventurous enough to take his camera outside which allows cinematographer Douglas Knapp to snag some really nice moments around the yucca-heavy apartment complex along with some coastal shots and some pastoral mellowness in the California countryside. The musical score, mostly low-key acoustic strumming by Guy Guilbert punctuated with some percussive arabesques, is extraordinarily fitting and compliments the film well, especially during the more intimate scenes where the music gives the action an undercurrent that’s fitting and generally propulsive.
The film’s high production values and care for both the characters and the story give the material a mood and a presentation that is far more sensual than it is tawdry or lurid. Almost as if the actors are inhabiting a world of their own, nobody is ever within the four corners of the frame except the principals and it’s a pretty lovely picture in terms of pure visual storytelling with the sexual passages edited just so to keep it on this side of the softcore line.
Jason Scott turns in a sentimental performance which does a good job in bringing out the strain in the relationship between Linda York and Barbara Mills. York’s bright smile and Mills’s easygoing, natural radiance help lend to their believability as a couple but it also goes to highlight the fact that the west coast was home to some truly remarkable beauties. And from the sunrise on the ladies of the canyons to the sunset of the beach bum surfer girls, the world of Bob Chinn seemed to capture them all.
Aside from the remarkable technical achievements, one of the most impressive things about The Love Garden is the eyeball sync job that had to be done by editor Ray Nadeau after the audio track was stolen out of Haggard’s car. What could have been a colossal setback turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise as, according to Chinn, the opportunity for the actors to go in and redo their lines created a situation in which they gave better readings than they did while the scene was being shot.
The lascivious promises made in the artwork of the one-sheet poster for The Love Garden aren’t completely undone by the very human story that the film presents as the audience definitely gets what they paid to see. But Haggard finds such a delicate balance between smut and serious that one has to wonder if people in 1971 knew just how special a film like The Love Garden was; a sex picture that dares to ponder the weighty thesis question of “Why do we fall in love with the wrong people?” and actually have the talent to convey it and the intelligence to attempt an answer.
(C) Copyright 2023, Patrick Crain
Apollo Twin 