Love is Strange and The One I Love

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/24/14 at 2:38pm

Caught both of these two films this weekend, and enjoyed each of them, despite their flaws.

Love is Strange had one of the best trailers all summer, and going into the theater I thought, "I'm going to LOVE this!" Maybe my expectations were impossible to live up to, but I still found much to appreciate. The performances were impeccable, especially Lithgow, Molina and Tomei.

It moved at a deliberate pace and had a slice of life feel to it. A sort of Boyhood meets Scenes From a Marriage. The scoring was gorgeous- mostly Chopin- and the piano melodies would glide by over montages of New York or someone painting or preparing food.

The hardships they faced were met with quiet agony, and it was so unrelenting, that I feared there wouldn't be any catharsis for the characters (or the audience). The last 20-25 minutes made up for it though, and I think many on this board will be interested and moved by the subject matter.

The One I Love also had a fantastic score and two strong performances, but the intriguing premise immediately had me thinking, this is either going to be really cool or get really messy. Well, it went more towards messy than cool, but I wasn't bored and it made for some fun conversation afterward trying to figure things out with my friend.

As "original" as I think it was trying to be, the plot twists had a been there, done that quality to them. I just finished reading House of Leaves (F*CKing awesome book!) so the deal with the guest house took on some of those qualities. It also shared a lot in common with Coherence from earlier this year.

Plus.....



SPOILER****************************************


There is a moment straight out of Under the Dome that actually made my friend and I say "Under the Dome" out loud and made us laugh. It was just too much.

Plus the ultimate twist at the end with the bacon was really obvious to both of us...


END SPOILER*************************************




I went because of Elizabeth Moss, and on that front I couldn't have been happier, so if you're a fan of hers I think it's worth checking out.

[haterobics]

Posted: 1/25/15 at 7:36pm

Finally caught Love is Strange over the weekend, and wow, I expected to like this movie so much, but it didn't really pay off. The performances are great, but they just kept introducing story elements and then never resolving them.

**SPOILERS FOR REST OF POST**

Molina writes a letter to the school that fires him, and we hear him do some voiceover reading the letter, while we see the students, and then... nothing about it ever again.

Vlad and the nephew seem to be having a strange relationship, borderline sexual, possibly criminal, then they get in trouble for stealing French books from the library?! And the nephew denies taking them, but Lithgow says they are in the kid's room, and nothing more about Vlad or the books ever again...

Tomei sort of creepily implies he shouldn't be painting a picture of Vlad fully clothed on the roof, with some homophobic/pedophilic undertone that seems off... but no worries, it is never brought up ever again.

Molina gets a lead on a rent-controlled apartment they can move into, but they never seem to move into it and it doesn't seem the apartment shown in the penultimate scene in the movie.

The nephew is shown at the end skateboarding with a girl, and he mentioned a specific girl he hoped he would meet again, who lives in NYC, earlier in the movie... but is that her? Did he move on and find another girl? No clue.

I mean, a few things not resolving and you could just say "Oh, I guess it's kind of like life..." or something, but this movie seemed to keep setting up things and then not caring about them ever again, which is especially strange in such a short movie. It seemed like it didn't quite know what it was supposed to be...

Just weird, and I had put off watching that for so long because I wanted to wait until I had a distraction-free night to take it all in... oh well... I think the promise of how good it could have been is what makes it all the more annoying.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/25/15 at 10:17pm

Love is Strange is a beautiful, beautiful film. In my Top 20, which is a compliment, because a 15 them were interchangeable in my Top 10. Molina, Lithgow, and Tomei were so wonderful. Stephanie Zacharek had an excellent review in The Village Voice about how it is at once about love and also about trying to manage life as a New Yorker and an affordable living space. You could show it with Inside Llewyn Davis and Frances Ha and have one gut-punching but rich triple-feature of the ups and downs of living in the city.

SPOILERS

"Molina writes a letter to the school that fires him, and we hear him do some voiceover reading the letter, while we see the students, and then... nothing about it ever again."

If you look at the scene, he recites it with Chopin playing as we see images of the school going about their day. He puts his heart and soul in that letter, but it feels like nothing changes at that school in his absence. Nobody is standing up for him. People accepted his fate. That's why it ends that way. As a raised Catholic, I actually found that moment a searing indictment. It is just so cafeteria Catholic to love the openly gay music teacher at the Catholic school but not say a thing when he is fired on the grounds for 'sin'.

"Tomei sort of creepily implies he shouldn't be painting a picture of Vlad fully clothed on the roof, with some homophobic/pedophilic undertone that seems off... but no worries, it is never brought up ever again."

That's an awful implication to make and, I can only speak for myself and say, I got zero sense of that. Ira Sachs is also a smart, queer filmmaker and one thing I know he does well is create worlds where 'ally'/straight characters aren't those sorts of people you're accusing them of doing. It's bothering the nephew, which is clear. It is like in Enough Said where people have to tell Julia Louis Dreyfus to stop favoring her daughter's friend so much because it is starting to annoy a lot of people. Tomei's performance is a good balance for an audience stand-in, sometimes very sympathetic and other times exasperated. She cares for Lithgow's character and does at times find his presence disruptive, but no way does she go from, 'Aw, sweet old man', to 'why is that pervert making my son's friend his art subject'?

"Molina gets a lead on a rent-controlled apartment they can move into, but they never seem to move into it and it doesn't seem the apartment shown in the penultimate scene in the movie."

It's most certainly the same apartment at the end.

**END SPOILERS**


It's a nice slice of life film where people are shown in having moments but these short glimpses of people in their lives, and not necessarily arcs that sustain through the film, shows a calming, understated simplicity. Clear influences are Tokyo Story and Make Way for Tomorrow, but I also think it speaks to trying to live in New York. I was blubbering mess for the last 10 minutes of it.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/25/15 at 10:21pm

I honest to god thought this thread was going to be comparing a Stones song to an R.E.M. song.

But this isn't Pitchfork. This is Broadwayworld.

[haterobics]

Posted: 1/26/15 at 1:37am

I'd go REM in that case. Love is Strong isn't my favorite Stones tune by a long shot.