Review: Love is Strange
It seems like any other day for Ben and George (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina). They get up and get ready, try to find a taxi, exchange wedding vows, and hold the reception at their Manhattan home, delighting their intimate circle of friends and families with song and laughs. The day is a celebration of their 39 years together, of being, as one guest toasts, "an example to be followed."
The legalisation of their commitment has consequences. Though George's homosexuality was long known to the Catholic school administrators, they reluctantly release him from his duties as music teacher after the diocese learns of the marriage. With the loss of George's income and Ben a pensioner, the couple are forced to sell their apartment and ask their families to temporarily house them until they can find more affordable accommodations. George stays with Roberto and Ted (Manny Perez and Chayenne Jackson), gay cops living in the same building. Their constant partying strains George's patience and emphasises his feelings of being an intruder.
Ben feels just as intrusive as the houseguest of his nephew Elliot (Darren Burrows), whose workaholic ways are fraying his marriage to work-from-home writer Kate (Marisa Tomei). In one amusing scene, Ben chatters on as Kate attempts to work. Tomei, as usual, is attuned and understated in her playing - Kate admires and loves Ben, but his presence is an interruption, yet even she has to suppress a laugh when she suggests he start painting again and he, without irony, replies, "I can't really work if there's someone else around." Meanwhile, there's also Elliot and Kate's teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan) to consider; he's not exactly over the moon about having the elderly Uncle Ben occupy the lower half of his bunk bed.
Living with others may be an enormous challenge, but living apart is the greater struggle. Director Ira Sachs and co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias layer the drama with commentary on the economics of Manhattan housing, but they never lose sight of the central couple's plight. There isn't much of a set-up of their relationship - here are Ben and George, they've been together for almost 2 decades, and they just got married - so the poignancy derived from their initial reunion is a testament to both Lithgow and Molina. They carry the weight of those 39 years in their body language; one can easily see how they complete one another.
In fact, the actors' work is so potent that it may have been a mistake to keep the characters apart for the majority of the film. To be honest, I'm not sure if any of the contrivances and the secondary plot of Elliot, Kate and Joey's problems are of any interest at all. There is no doubt that Sachs displays a generosity for his characters and avoids unnecessary fuss in his directorial style. Yet I would have rather jettisoned the first two-thirds of the film and expanded the exquisite final third when Ben and George share their lone extended scene of togetherness followed by the melancholic yet quietly uplifting coda.
Love is Strange
Directed by: Ira Sachs
Written by: Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias
Starring: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, Charlie Tahan, Chayenne Jackson, Manny Perez
