Love and Diane (2002) User Reviews

This mother-daughter tale is no reality show!

[SONNYK_USA · 8/10 · 20 June 2005]

Diane is the mother, Love in the daughter, and Donyaeh is the HIV+ toddler that's Love's son (Diane's grandchild). While unwed mother Love struggles to raise her child she also must try to keep her mother Diane from relapsing into the 'crack' world that has dominated so much of her life.

Extremely gripping documentary that puts you inside an impoverished household with seemingly no hope for survival. Somehow there are joyful moments to be found among the sad, and the struggle to make your child's life a little better than your own becomes all the more poignant.

Gritty documentary is worth your time if you like your life-dramas on the heavy side.

I Am Love's Daughter

[zaryihawhite · 1/10 · 5 May 2021]

My mom passed away on Dec.19.2014 When I was 13. After This Film was released (2002)I was born a couple of months back (Oct. 2001) After Donyaeh returned home he got taken by acs again but this time he said that he did not want to return home after that we really didn't see much of donyaeh but once he got older and was able to travel he would come to visit but every time it was with a girl Me and my brothers would be so happy to see him we would do everything he asked just because we didn't really get to see him like that. Whenever we came we knew we were getting taken away because he started taking pictures when the house was getting cleaned up. So throughout my childhood and my lil brothers were in and out of foster care because of Donyaeh. While we were young my brother would flaunt things he had stolen from his foster home to us and had told us that his foster parents bought it for him and he told us to be bad so we could get all the "luxury" and We Listened. On January 15,2015 me and majesty were taken by acs once again only this time it was reported by her youngest sister and Mother. We attended a memorial.

But when we had to attend the All Souls Chapel and Crematory Love's Mother had gave my dad(Courtney) the wrong address to the crematory and had to call her back because she lied and gave him the wrong address when my father arrived they would not let him see her because she wasn't listed down with a partner she was listed down as single (My Dad had been With My Mother For Over 20 years Now) They called Diane and told her that what she did was disrespectful and why we should try to do that at a time like this.

After the memorial service was over love youngest sister had insisted we go back to her house because everyone was there. We went, but as the hours passed people started leaving my grandma had gave my dad liquor and they started drinking and talking about my mom and my father just broke down crying yelling her name. They did not console my dad they put him out the building and left him drunk outside while me and my brothers were upstairs sleeping in her apartment when my dad came back he woke me and my brother up and went home.

The whole family had came out for her when she died when all she really wanted was for them to come see her while she was alive.

When my mom started getting sick she always cried for her mom and sisters she never cried for nobody else no matter how dirty they treated her.

My mom had let them file for us and most the time they wouldn't even give her the full amount knowing she has three kids the most they would give her $300 The Most.

My mom youngest sister has said nasty things about me since the age of 10.

The whole story is This Documentary was supposed to show women that you do not wanna be like my mother (Love) because when you become sick your family will treat you like your already dead this is not what you need nor want she wanted to show women that being grown at a young age doesn't get you no where but either sick or pregnant. But In This Case she didn't have a choice because her mom was a crackhead so she had grow up earlier and learn to survive on her Own because she did not have a responsible parent to guide her to cloth her nor feed her.

If anybody have any questions or wants to know the more in depth of the story, Please feel free to contact me 6466532230.

What a heartbreaking story this is, and how beautifully and intimately told.

[Pianoman-3 · 16 August 2004]

What a heartbreaking story this is, and how beautifully and intimately told.

Director Jennifer Dworkin is filming right inside the heart of this family's most delicate moments, their worst arguments, their most private discussions, their most personal moments of joy... it is a credit to Diane, to Love, and to all the other characters in this movie that they have allowed so much pain and privacy to be recorded on film so that other people might learn from their story or reflect on its causes and meanings. Everything you read in the reviews of this movie about the director's evident compassion and the careful, clear laying out of this complex story is true. Your emotional response to each moment is vivid, and if my own experience means anything, the conclusion is just as provocative and ideologically open-ended as the rest of the movie. Dworkin's tone of sophisticated, humane lucidity must have been very hard to preserve, both in filming and in editing the picture, but she has produced an invaluable document.

As far as I know, Women Make Movies (headquartered in NYC) is the only organization with video prints available. As fantastic as WMM is, I wish the movie were more widely available, so that it could reach the broader audience it deserves, and even find its way to some powerful people who could make a difference for people in Love and Diane's circumstances. (Check university libraries, too, since some schools have obtained institutional copies of the video.)

If the bond of family, the labor of forgiveness, the plight of the impoverished, the debates between personal responsibility and social determinism, the possibility of hope, or the continued survival of serious documentary film-making mean anything to you, this is a truly indispensable film.