- published: 04 Dec 2013
- views: 56264
Crazy Love is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens. The screenplay by Klores explores the troubled relationship between New York City attorney Burt Pugach and his considerably younger mistress Linda Riss, who was blinded and permanently scarred when thugs hired by Pugach threw lye in her face.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was shown at the Seattle International Film Festival before going into limited release in the US. It later was shown at the Reykjavik International Film Festival, the Raindance Film Festival in the UK, and the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.
Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film "somewhat sickening, mildly gonzo" and added, "Crazy Love takes a mildly hyperventilated approach to its subject; there’s a hint of tabloid sensationalism, a splash of kitsch sentimentalism. It moves fast, if predictably so, with the usual mash-up of talking-head testimonials, faded family photographs, blurred home movies and generic stock footage meant to evoke specific times and places. An opening quotation from Jacques Lacan makes you think you’re headed for deep waters, when all that’s in store is a frolic in the shallows. The overall vibe is morbidly entertaining, though something of a downer, partly because it’s unclear if Mr. and Mrs. Pugach know that they are such sick puppies, partly because it’s unclear if Mr. Klores cares that they are . . . [It] belongs to that class of documentaries that might be called the family freak show. But it also belongs to the more familiar category of the misery documentary, those nonfiction works that poke into the ghastliness of other people’s lives like a finger rummaging inside a wound . . . it also raises more questions than it answers, including the moral responsibility a documentary filmmaker assumes when his subjects seem so eager to exploit themselves."