John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, and Marisa Tomei star in what may be an unexpected hit about love, marriage, and moving in with your kids.
We’ve seen John Lithgow play a preacher, an alien, a Kinsey, and evil PIXAR king, a trans*woman, and a sociopathic father.
What we haven’t seen is him play a painter who is one-half of an older gay couple marrying after 39 years together.
Intergenerational movies are nothing new. Kids moving back in with parents, parents moving in with kids, these are common enough. Most of the time, the reunion is because someone is ill or newly single, there’s a kid or two in tow, and you can recite along with the plot.
Love is Strange tweaks this formula. No one wants to take in the newlyweds, who lose their home after a job loss, and there’s no such thing as a quick move in Manhattan.
The solution? Dial the clock back and crash where you can, one on a friend’s couch, with other with a grown nephew and his family.
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John Lithgow is the standout in a decidely un-Lithgow role (Ben). We’re accustomed to seeing him as confident, a little arrogant, sarcastic, regal, somewhat aloof and condescending.
What’s so surprising and gripping about this role is that Lithgow plays it in a state of constant why-am-I-here-I-just-don’t-understand bewilderment. He’s a man whose anchor is gone, living across town. He’s confronted with a houseful near strangers, including young people, and seems to only be truly happy painting on the building’s roof. He doesn’t understand the language, the hostility from visitors, the lack of support from people who were so ready to see them married. And he’s sad. This sadness, combined with loss and confusion, make you forget that you are watching a man who spent several years of primetime making us take another look at humankind…and making us feel pretty stupid.
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What’s both sweet and jarring about the movie is how the men hold on to their relationship and how they are forced to do so.
Astronomically expensive New York City dwellings are nothing new. Job discrimination and job loss for being gay are nothing new. They’ve been plot fodder mined for decades. But a movie with romantic leads over 60? That shows the reality of trying to get basic needs met when one (or a couple) is over 65? That’s new. And that the lead couple is a pair of senior citizen? Rare indeed.
A film about family (natural and chosen) and love and adversity and what two people are capable of that does not devolve in to a dysfunctional snark or soggy sentimentality, that avoids gay cinema cliches and Lifetime Movie of the week melodrama? That’s a tribute to the talent of the writer/director/producer team.
Knowing that there are thousands of couples facing the same prospect?
Sad.
For more about Love is Strange, visit the Love is Strange youtube channel.
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