LOVE IS STRANGE (2014)
Where viewed: laptop/bed
Experience with film: none
Writers: Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias
Director: Ira Sachs
Principal Actors: John Lithgow, Alfred Molida
The first three sequences of LOVE IS STRANGE create a situation that would lend itself well to dramatic exploration–an older gay couple prepare for a big day in their lushly appointed NYC apartment; then it turns out their big day is their wedding, after 39 years together, which they celebrate; this leads to George (Molina) being fired immediately from his music teacher job at a private Catholic school. With George unemployed and Ben (Lithgow) not pulling in any cash as a retiree/painter, the couple is forced to sell their apartment and live apart with friends and relatives while planning the next stage of their life together. Soon George is sleeping on the couch of their former downstairs neighbors, while Ben stays at his nephew’s apartment, sharing a bunk bed with the nephew’s teenage son. That the couple is forced to live apart is the main dramatic hinge of the film. It’s a good set-up for either a comedy or a drama. Unfortunately, the film chooses neither, instead descending into a series of abandoned premises. One such abandoned situation: the nephew’s son has been accused of stealing old French books from the school library, which he denies vehemently–until Ben reveals to his nephew that he found the books under the son’s bed. The nephew is mad that Ben didn’t tell him earlier to save all the fighting and denials from his son, and the son surely must be mad that Ben has betrayed him. He’s lost all possible allies in a foreign household. You’d think that there would be more after this, now that the apartment has been turned into a powder keg of resentment and mistrust, that the filmmakers will dive into the consequences, the characters’ revelations, the actual drama. But you’d be wrong. Instead of diving in, they instead let the film slide off the surface of these situations and continue to the next episode. The books aren’t mentioned again. Once we’re past the half-way mark, the film shifts from descending into abandoned premises to devolving into plot shenanigans. The film has set the stakes very low, having gone to great lengths to explain that a different family member has plenty of space for both men to live together in upstate New York. So it opts to artificially inject some drama into the sagging plot by giving Ben a sudden medical problem. Old reliable. Then the film chooses to solve the characters’ main dilemma via deus ex machina (a stranger George meets is moving out of his rent-controlled apartment–would they like it?) which is another symptom of slapping a series of premises together instead of plotting a narrative. Now, a film can be episodic or loosely structured and still feel complete. Or at least satisfying. But LOVE IS STRANGE lacks commitment to its episodes and its structure. It never bites, it never follows through, like when you throw your dog a piece of broccoli and the animal gums the greenery, then drops it. That the film ends on an agonizingly long (and unconnected) scene of the nephew’s son and his new girlfriend blankly skateboarding down the street was appropriate.
FADE OUT 