LOVE & DIANE ------------
When director Jennifer Dworkin heard about former crack addict Diane Hazzard's attempt to pull her family of five children back together after having splintered it apart within New York City's child welfare system, she thought the family would make an interesting documentary subject. But she found a story within that story in the relationship of Diane and her second eldest daughter, Love Hinson, an HIV+ eighteen year old who, as the film begins, has just given birth to her first son Donyaeh in "Love & Diane."
With festival award winner "Love & Diane," Dworkin has created a film that is both intimate and epic, a compelling observation of the labyrinthine state welfare systems which frustrate with cross purposes and the cyclical nature of abuse and neglect. It is also the story of the indomitable spirit that is Diane Hazzard.
Things seem rosy at first, despite the bad history they've been built upon. Love and her sisters Trenice (16), Morean (14) and younger brother Willie (older sister Tomeka lives separately and older brother Charles has committed suicide) live with their mother and all dote upon the adorable Donyaeh. Donyaeh's status under Diane's medical care allows them rental assistance and the family moves into a larger, airier apartment and pray for togetherness. But Love suffers from the same clinical depression as her mother and her inability to forgive her mother as well as her guilt over her baby's potential HIV status makes her explode in rages. Diane seeks help in dealing with the family situation and ironically sets off a chain of events that cost her her new
apartment and her daughter her child.
Dworkin stays invisible, documenting the drama from within and alternating with commentary from Love and Diane, who use the video camera as confidante. Using old black and white photographs and video footage that suggests home movies, the director fills in her subjects' backstories as they narrate. We learn that Diane only ever saw her mother three times and that she was drunk the second time and dead in her casket the third when Diane was only eleven. Love repeatedly ran away from foster and group homes and spent time on the streets. A photograph of Diane at sixteen with her first baby uncannily reflects the same
startled expression of a picture we've seen taken of Love with Donyaeh.
While Love often appears to be her own worst enemy, we can't help but root for the troubled woman. An early bit of elation comes when Donyaeh's HIV test comes back negative - a positive event for people who are more used to being dealt crushing blows. As Love struggles for over a year to get her son back (all the while fitfully ditching mandatory therapy sessions when she apparently needs them most), Diane depends on her newfound faith to put the past behind her and soldier on. She's positively girlish picking out an outfit for a work training program she hopes will get her off of public assistance, declaring her love for offices, suits, stockings and heels. Despite their lack of education, both woman not only understand their identities, they can effectively
communicate what's making them tick.
If there's a fault with Dworkin's film, it is that it tends to accentuate the positive. The sisters who tease their mother on New Year's Eve when her resolutions apparently have been recycled for three year's running, show only affection. There is no sense of the dysfunction we hear so much about but only witness in a few heated arguments between Diane and Love. Diane's acceptance of Willie's decision to leave her home and alternate between the streets and a group home is puzzling, as is her absence from Love's new home with boyfriend Courtney as Love slowly builds a foundation for Donyaeh's return. Only one small note of discord is evident between Courtney and Love and the impact of her disease on the relationship is never mentioned.
Still, with the focus on "Love & Diane" Dworkin delivers a strong portrait of a mother and daughter's guilt, love and determination.
A-
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