LEONARD’S NORDIC GODDESS
Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love (12A) Verdict: Seductive documentary ★★★✩✩
THE late Leonard Cohen had lots of lovers, and Nick Broomfield’s documentary gives us plenty of insight into how irresistible the Canadian singersongwriter was to the opposite sex. In one particularly memorable sequence, we see a young woman falling under his spell as if hypnotised.
But on the hedonistic Greek island of Hydra, in 1960, he in turn fell for a sexy Norwegian blonde called Marianne Ihlen. Broomfield’s film charts the subsequent ups and downs of their relationship — which finally caved in after he persuaded her and her son Axel to follow him back to Montreal — and how she inspired one of Cohen’s greatest songs, So Long Marianne.
As is his wont, Broomfield injects a fair bit of himself into his film, this time on the basis that he too was briefly one of Marianne’s lovers. We hear she gave Broomfield his first acid trip, and rather unnecessarily are shown Sixties pictures of him, looking predictably dishy. He tells us how beguiled he was by Hydra, full of ‘so many golden, sun-kissed people . . . having so much fun together.’
Yet it was an illusion. All that glorious bacchanalia disintegrated into alcoholism, drug dependency and suicide, and Marianne’s son Axel, no thanks to Cohen, ended up institutionalised. Plainly, the great troubadour could also be a firstclass rotter, but Broomfield is too in awe of his subject to dwell much on that.
It’s not one of his best films, but contains plenty of terrific clips and revealing interviews, making it almost as seductive as Cohen himself.