Exacerbated by a variety of global conditions due to COVID-19, the United States is now a society in which working is the prime directive. Not creating art, not engaging with cultures or communities beyond ourselves, just working in order to *attempt* to survive. You get sick? You better hope that your job doesn’t consider an illness like COVID-19 something you can get over in one day, because laws like these which provide no safe-guards, no health coverage, or no support for families imply that production is more important than the workers on the line. In the latest project from filmmaker Pete Ohs (Jethica; Youngstown), a world is imagined in which the opposite is true: leisure is the name of the game, hobbies are what people must pursue, and no work is allowed. Rather than paint this as a perfect world, it’s a utopia in the truest sense — a non-existent place as it still struggles by not solving the problem of production, but by just merely swinging in a vastly different direction. Co-written by Ohs and lead actors/frequent collaborators Stephanie Hunt (Youngstown) and Will Madden (Jethica), their film, Love and Work, satirizes the very human desire to be productive, implying that to outlaw any form of work is just the same as we do now by looking down on those who pursue leisure. Premiering during Slamdance Film Festival 2024, Ohs’s Love and Work possesses enough bite and laughs to keep the audience engaged and open to the message of the film.
L-R: Stephanie Hunt as Diane, Lynda Ohs as Evelyn, Frank Mosley as Hank, and Will Madden as Bob Fox in LOVE AND WORK. Photo courtesy of Exile PR/Spartan Media Acquisitions.
In the past of an alternate future, the concept of jobs is outlawed as society at large has determined that enough “things” have been made and that the surplus of “stuff’ needs to run out before more should be made. As such, those who want to work have to slink through alleyways, staying away from the prying eyes of the public, whether it’s to stuff teddy bears, fold boxes, or form shoes. If something’s going to be made as a result of their work, it’s officially contraband. Yet, people like Diane (Hunt) and Fox (Madden) still risk finding jobs because they love to work. However, what neither expects is that either will find something else to love at their most recent job — each other.
L-R: Stephanie Hunt as Diane and Will Madden as Bob Fox in LOVE AND WORK. Photo courtesy of Exile PR/Spartan Media Acquisitions.
The obvious silliness of Love and Work is not what you’ll notice first. It’s won’t be that the shoe factory Diane works in is basically a run-down building and the materials used are just thrown out portions of whatever objects might be utilized to form a shoe. It won’t be that the interview Diane engages in with Boss Hank (Frank Mosley) is full of generic-yet-slightly-coded questions or that her answers match in style. The first thing you’ll notice is that everything is in black and white, not an ounce of color to be seen anywhere. With the camera locked on an alley as credits appear for the players who are about to begin their performance, despite being filled with natural sounds, this space and this time is very clearly unnatural due to its lack of chroma. Absent naturalism, we’re clued in immediately that what follows may as well be an episode of The Twilight Zone wherein an aspect of humanity is going to be placed before us for laughs while speaking to a real problem regarding capitalism, socialism, and the nature of humanity. The black and white being a visual clue, not of a world that’s stark and hopeless, but one that exists in a polar opposite of our own. On this, the script from Ohs, Hunt, and Madden is spot-on, exploring, through a variety of situations, just how screwed up the notion of “must work” and “must relax” are when considered as the only two options for a person to exist within. Why must there always be a binary view when choice is so much more complex and varied.
Consider this: in this world, Diane and Fox take on whatever jobs they can because they want to work. Because it’s outlawed, they must do it in secret. But why? If there are no jobs, who’s to uphold the law? Wearing crossing guard jackets are individuals who do exactly that, explained away as not having a job, but merely reminding people of the law. Except there are strikes given out for breaking the law and consequences for earning three. This implies that there is, actually, a group of individuals sanctioned to do work, even if they call it something else. And in this world, you have to call it something else in order to justify forcing people not to work, but to take up leisure activities like using a slide at the local park or just sitting on a bench enjoying the weather. Do anything more than a hobby and the light-reflective people may just get you and send you for a time out. In this world, the lack of capitalism still brings rise to a form of fascism where playing a musical instrument in public is fine as a hobby but doing so seriously must be practiced in private or in dark corners of the city. The only legal “work” is as a reminder and only they get to decide whether the law is broken or not. There’s power, there’s influence, and, for the people we meet through Diane’s experience, none of these people want to do harm to anyone else and they don’t see the act of creation as an act of violence against the world, merely as a way to spend their time doing something they value.
Frank Mosley as Hank in LOVE AND WORK. Photo courtesy of Exile PR/Spartan Media Acquisitions.
The script doesn’t particularly explore the idea that what Diane, Fox, and others are doing is productive, merely that their jobs are an empty facsimile. We don’t know where the shoes go next that Diane is making, only that she’s making them and, through the parts she assembles, seems to find satisfaction in the process. She doesn’t seem to care what she’s making or where it goes, only that she gets the chance to do something. That the script doesn’t answer these questions of value isn’t a weakness as it’s not the point. My read of the film is one in which a question is asked about striking balance between work and leisure, but also about how it’s ok to enjoy working for the pleasure it provides and not necessarily because you produced something. In our capitalist society, success is defined by the size of your bank account and intelligence by your titles or followers. If someone is unable to work, they are immediately seen as less-than in character, intelligence, and morals, as if being homeless or jobless is something one necessarily chooses and is itself not a by-product of being rejected by a system that isn’t designed to help its citizenry, only to create more workers. Put another way, on a personal level, this review is being written by someone with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, who applied to many jobs, interviewed for far fewer, and was hired for fewer still. Elements of Madness is not a funded operation, but a volunteer one, and I do it because it keeps me sane (first while serving as an adjunct and now as a stay-at-home dad). I love exploring cinema and the creations of storytellers and do it regardless of pay; yet, there’s a section of the world who doesn’t understand why I’d put in as much effort into reviewing cinema past and present as I do without a paycheck. Granted, I’m fortunate to have a patron in the form of my wife and editor, so I can do things that others can’t, but there remains this sense from others that, without being paid, what I do isn’t serious. By the designate of the reminders, would I be working or is this a hobby? Thankfully, I don’t need the validation of a reminder to know the answer because it doesn’t matter. The value of work can be intrinsic, something which Hunt’s and Madden’s performances convey, as well.
L-R: Will Madden as Bob Fox and Stephanie Hunt as Diane in LOVE AND WORK. Photo courtesy of Exile PR/Spartan Media Acquisitions.
There’s a delicacy to Hunt and Madden’s respective performances so that neither comes off as a stereotype or cutout person meant to sell jokes versus introspection. The way they are presented, one can easily laugh at them due to the situation and the way that they respond, but it’s the performances (a mostly silent one at the start from Hunt and a freer and chattier one from Madden) which make it clear there’s more going on than just people crowded around a table in a broken-down space. It’s the little ways that these performers look, move, and exist within the various spaces of the film that make them whole people with wants and needs beyond the satirical. Because of their work, Love and Work is able to peel away the softness of the ridiculousness and interrogate their society and our own until all that’s left is something raw and hard to look at. Don’t mistake this to mean that there’s something foul or grotesque with the film. It’s not that kind of story. It’s more than their silly reality isn’t not so far off from our own, and that should trouble us.
If you decide to give Love and Work a shot, please allow this request: when the film is over, close your eyes, take a deep breathe, and sit with the film for a bit. You may be surprised with how you feel.
Screening during Slamdance Film Festival 2024.
For more information, head to the official Slamdance Love and Work webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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