Hateship Loveship

The country and western soundtrack is perfect for Liza Johnson’s Hateship Loveship. It’s a small sensitive film about simple folk with deep losses. Broken people fumble their way to fixing each other.

A silly prank leads through humiliation and possible heartbreak to a family-wide redemption. In Louisiana two high school girls send fake romantic emails to one, Sabitha’s (Hailee Steinfeld) live-in caregiver, Johanna Parry (Kristen Wiig). Since 15 Johanna has been a housebound servant so she’s unprepared for the temptations and tricks of the real world. She falls for the false romance and buses to Chicago, where she plans to marry Sabitha’s misrepresented father Ken (Guy Pearce), an addicted loser. But first Johanna spends $2,500 to ship to Ken the antique furniture his father-in-law McCauley (Nick Nolte) gave his daughter as a wedding present, then took back after she was killed in an accident, with the drunk high Ken driving.

Nick’s surprise at her arrival shows Johanna her mistake. She sticks around, cleaning his apartment compulsively, making him meals, which prompts him to dump his druggie girlfriend Chloe (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Eventually they marry and have a baby, which — after the return of the furniture — thaws old McCauley’s heart, to the point that he gives them back the antiques. He starts a relationship with the town cashier Eileen (Christine Lahti), whose two football playing sons are Sabitha’s classmates.  

Ken’s motel, which Johanna helps resurrect with her money as well as her elbow grease, is called The Oasis. In this arid sterile landscape of selfishness and betrayals the simple Johanna’s warmth and openness prove the oasis that will sustain the life around her. She wins over McCauley, Eileen, of course Ken and even his initially antagonistic daughter Sabitha (whose name suggests she’s not quite a cat or a witch but close). Her friend Edith (Sami Gayle), who authored the deceptive love letters, is too shallow to learn. “What do you want?” she brazenly confronts Johanna at her graduation. “I have what I want,” Johanna replies. Edith wants to become a dermatologist. She still runs skin deep.