FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! John Cassavetes - Faces 

Faces by John Cassavetes is one of those movies you start a video store because of: To grab people and shout "Here, you watch this one today, it's that great!". After all, in Corona Lockdown in particular, we're inundated with all the crap on netflix and amazon that such a triumphant film is absolutely needed! Because no one lives like they do in the movies that run 24/7 on netflix. Nor does anyone we know. What Cassavetes has made is therefore only all the more astonishing: Faces is tender and honest and uncompromising - a film that examines how we really live. The main characters are middle-aged, middle-class and quite ordinary. In fact, they possess everything they desire. Except love and fulfillment, perhaps. They have become consumers in the cruelest sense. Their essence is that of an economic being who earns money and spends it again. Beings with meaningless existence. They do nothing, create nothing, they only use. Thus stranded, with no possibility of escape. In a long night, when the marriage reaches its breaking point, there are only two possibilities of escape: alcohol or adultery. Because, unfortunately, our life does not offer too many other possibilities, or does it? It all starts with the man (John Marley), a manager, successful, stopping at a whore. The prostitute (Gena Rowlands) and her roommate are already entertaining two clients and so it comes to a meeting full of dirty jokes doused with lots of alcohol. The man goes home to his wife (Lynn Carlin). They sit at the dinner table and talk about sex and we notice that they are terribly "sophisticated". In truth, however, they are rather frightened and uptight. In an alcoholic breakdown, the man announces that he wants a divorce. He makes a phone call to the whore. He will visit her again, while his wife goes off with three friends.... This could all seem very maudlin, but Cassavetes film never reaches that level. Faces is at no point cheesy. This is mainly thanks to the great Gena Rowlands, who plays her prostitute with so much human compassion that I wanted to see Faces again right away - and give the DVD to everyone else as well! P.S. For a long time, the film was out of print in our country, so Henry Hopper, Dennis Hopper's son, rented it and never brought it back. One of my favorite anecdotes and after all one of our most prominent reminder customers.