"Love is Strange" is like a beautiful yet unfinished painting; an enigmatic portrait of the lives of two wonderful characters that has just enough blank canvas to make it feel somehow mesmerizingly incomplete.
Directed by Ira Sachs, "Love is Strange" is the story of Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), a gay couple living in New York that marries after nearly 40 years together. Ben is a painter and George is a music teacher working at a Catholic school. George loses his job when the archdiocese learns of the wedding, and Ben and George are forced to give up their apartment. While looking for a new place, the couple is forced to live apart temporarily as none of their friends and family have enough room for both.
Ben stays with his nephew Elliot (Darren Burrows), Elliot's wife, Kate (Marisa Tomei), and their teenage son, Joey (Charlie Tahan). It's an awkward arrangement, as unexpected house guests often are. Ben shares a bunk bed with the turbulent teenager, and Kate, a novelist, is annoyed and distracted by Ben's chatty personality. Elliot is a workaholic who is out of touch with the frustrations of his son and wife, which just adds to tension in the household.
George moves in with two neighbors, Roberto and Ted, cops who love to stay up late and party loudly with their friends. It's not as dysfunctional as Ben's living situation, but no less awkward for the reserved George. As Ben puts it "When you live with people, you know them better than you care to."
The film's subtlety is it greatest strength. This isn't some "Odd Couple" style fish-out-of-water comedy. There are no bad guys or really even any antagonists here, just human beings dealing with a difficult situation. There is no attempt at making a grand statement based on the fact the story centers on a same-sex relationship; it is a touching, romantic story that just happens to be about two men. The film never deigns to reduce itself to cliches or caricatures.
Molina and Lithgow both give fantastic performances, displaying the kind of easy, familiar chemistry you'd expect from partners who have been together for four decades. You get the sense that George and Ben are still very much in love after all these years, and the separation and upheaval of their life together is difficult and painful. The relationship has had its ups and downs; there are beautiful memories as well as regrets. While many films present embellished, dramatized versions of relationships, "Love is Strange" is a character portrait filled with nuance and truth. It shows a love between two people tinged with tenderness and vulnerability without resorting to mawkish melodrama.
This focus on character results in a plot that meanders to a certain degree. The story crosses paths with a number of possible subplots but, for the most part, just strolls on by rather detouring into them. The film hints at much beneath the surface with the secondary characters (there are faint, surprising traces of homophobia within the nephew's "progressive" liberal family, for example) but again, like a painting it is largely left to the viewer to imagine or interpret the meaning of the subject. The film ultimately jumps into an early and almost unexpected denouement that will leave many caught off guard, and that unorthodox rhythm is clearly an intentional choice of Sachs'.
Oscar Wilde once remarked that most often Life imitated Art. With "Love is Strange," it is refreshingly the opposite.
"Love is Strange" is available on Blu-ray and DVD on January 13th. Extras include:
* Audio Commentary with Lithgow, Molina and Sachs. * "What is Love: The Making of 'Love is Strange' " * L.A. Film Festival Q&A with Lithgow, Molina, Sachs and Cheyenne Jackson
Film: 4 Yaps Extras: 3.5 Yaps
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdfA5Ff5e78?rel=0&w=514&h=289]