love strange love
love is strange, but the r rating slapped onto
love is strange
is a lot stranger .
natasha mendonca strange love 2016, film still. courtesy the artist and transient films
strange love airs wednesdays (10 p. m. et) on tlc .
' love is strange' takes something so right and leaves it hanging all wrong .
love is strange
is a testament to love, not in an overly sentimental way, but in a realistic way .
getting by … john lithgow in love is strange. photograph: allstar / sony picture classics
after watching love is strange, one would hope that it would look like george and ben’s .
love is strange
boasts an abundance of patience and kindness - but not much of a pulse .
love is strange is drab - looking and has its longueurs, but it' s emotionally very full .
“love is strange” is rated r (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). frank talk .
strange love: episodes is a serialized, multi - media performance that explores courtship, intimacy and love, amidst the music of john coltrane & miles davis .
looking for movie tickets? enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing love is strange near you .
sachs rarely overstates his themes .
love is strange
is largely a restrained drama about the loss of comfort .
alfred molina (left) and john lithgow in a scene from love is strange. photograph: jeong park / ap
looking for movie tickets? enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing the strange love of martha ivers near you .
few film love stories are as profound, rich, and devastating as alfred molina and john lithgow’s in ‘love is strange. ’ it just happens that their characters are gay, too .
it almost feels sacrilegious—and maybe even a little bit gross—to call love is strange profound, or important, or a painfully necessary film .
“ strange love is organic and emotionally rich with an intense physicality that describes the human experience. ” – dalia ratnikas of the brooklyn rail
sit in those moments instead of underlining them or hurrying past them, hoping we get the shorthand .
love is strange
is a
yes, love is strange, but thank the heavens for that. in a world where lives are increasingly swayed by mortgages and job security, the nonsensical weirdness of love may be our only salvation .
in 1982, at age 19, she was in a soft - porn film called
love strange love
in which she played a prostitute who tries to seduce a 13 - year - old boy .
according to the latest watch and listen magazine poll just out yesterday (sunday, july 8), walter hugo khouri 1982' s masterpiece love strange love is now considered to be the greatest film in the history of cinema .
love is strange is an extraordinary achievement in the purest sense of the word extraordinary, for it transcends the ordinary by luxuriating in it with wonderfully oddball rhythms .
pivoting on a loving couple growing older, not having finances in place, needing to rely on others to get by, love is strange has universal poignancy .
if it is, and it should be, well, that wouldn’t be strange at all .
s about many things: growing old, new york real estate, family, work, friendships... but what it is really about is love. love is not strange at all. it is what we do, if we are lucky .
i can’t understand one day from another [ verse 1: buffalo madonna ] i can’t understand one day from another one night stand with an off - hand lover drug parade. 48 hours now there’s two blood types on these off - white covers pills, powder, going under the world’s a whore and i’ll always love her still i wonder, was she clean? did see needles beneath the sink think i need to slow it down a bit i’m always drunk and out of it plus the recent batch i’ve hit have been bat shit psychotic neurotic, nympho - erotic, exotic, robotic, chaotic, quixotic, hypnotic, narcotic, sex objects i lay the body in the shape of a cross beneath the neon sign at the old church yard the night grows like electrical plants and i am dancing the soul dance while the short term lover gathers up her things we don’t say a thing we don’t say a thing coming closer to not feeling at all i go through more, life goes through all [ hook ] this is strange love in a strange world i make strangle love to a strange girl all my lovers are strangers who get stranger and stranger the more we make love, the more we make love, love, love the more we make love, the more we make strange love [ verse 2: terry radjaw ] i gave you roses, roses, and roses you posed and i noticed, i noticed, i took the time to notice you make me lose my focus romantically so hopeless exposé exposes with a plus one on the dope list just bleed right through those noses and no more overdoses cause baby you so gorgeous and i know you can’t afford this need you to support this hold me with the closeness wake up to the grossness and roll with these guys that i roll with roll up all my dro hits and you and me can smoke this no need for hocus pocus see, i know you like i knows this and i’ll still be here gloating this love that i am boasting here’s your bubbly—toast this girl, you are my lotus— flower i can grow old with and i don’t care who knows this listen to these proses or i overdose my dosage this is our life— hold it hand in hand til we mold it the structure of our hearts, we could float into the ocean strange, strange love (x4) [ hook ] this is strange love in a strange world i make strangle love to a strange girl all my lovers are strangers who get stranger and stranger the more we make love, the more we make love, love, love the more we make love, the more we make strange love
a heartbreaking, inspiring and timely depiction of family, love and relationships in myriad forms. understated but powerful performances, delivered with dignity and all the failings humankind is subject to, reflecting the often unforeseen human costs of injustice. a superb family drama. this film shows that love is not as strange as the the people who love - - or as beautiful .
boiled down to a simple review, love is strange may be cinema’s love story of the year. but after you’ve had time for the film to settle with you—all of the hope it portrays about love in a modern world along with all the hopelessness of things that are beyond our control—it becomes clear that this could be the human story of the year, too .
( 2007). this is his best work yet: a wonderfully acted study in intimacy and the mystery of how much of our identity is invested in coupledom, especially in the long haul of marriage. love is strange, says the title. perhaps it gets stranger the longer you stay in love .
‘‘what do you mean, in love? ’’ p. asked, the color draining from her face .
love is strange
received a
15
rating from the british board of film classification, though even that seems off to me; 12 or 13 is more like it. in canada, sachs' film has a pg rating .
alec is in love with magnus. magnus needs alec to be his fake boyfriend. what could possibly go wrong ?
after being friends for more than 20 years, john lithgow and alfred molina are finally sharing the screen, and a bed. the actors play longtime lovers in
love is strange ,
a film directed and co - written by ira sachs opening august 22nd .
on race and gender, “doctor strange” is not nearly as daring. rachel mcadams is hamstrung as strange’s gal friday at the hospital, while the kathmandu lair has only one speaking asian character, wong (benedict wong), whose main characteristic is that he refuses to laugh. chiwetel ejiofor, at least, gets a decently meaty role as mordo, right - hand man to the ancient one, tasked with keeping her overachieving student strange in line .
what could be more beautiful than a young boy' s discovery of adult love from those who knew it best. seeing it from an old man' s eyes looking back on his childhood. experiencing it from the childs awe and discovery of a world where beauty and sex were valued in a special way. then, to have his mother, who loved him so very much, take him the final step into manhood. while some may cringe at the subject matter, i believe it was treated with sensitivity and respect. would only that my initiation into adulthood was with such love. i am thankful i have been able to pass on the wonder and amazement of discovering love, strange love to some. being the first love of another is a special gift .
and while, as said before, we’re cautious to label a film that deals with its characters’ gayness so matter - of - factly as “remarkable, ” so as to not betray that very achievement, it’s in those more intimate scenes that love is strange may be at its most astounding .
we could at least admire the mpaa’s honesty if it admitted that love is strange has been guilty of “excessive normalising of a loving homosexual relationship with no punishment or prolonged unhappiness for either party”. mainstream cinema has tended to like its gay characters either tormented (brokeback mountain), comical (the birdcage), dead (milk) or dying (philadelphia). the couple in love is strange fall into none of those categories. except for an instance of homophobia that forces one of them into unemployment, their sexuality passes without mention. it is only the mpaa that has made it an issue. the bbfc has gone for the slightly softer option of a 15 rating, again because of a few instances of strong language, though this also feels a tad harsh. i don’t recall the air turning blue when i saw love is strange at the berlin film festival back in february .
near the end of love is strange, george and ben exit a bar drunk and drunk on affection for each other and walk down the street side by side, but, like the couple from jackson heights, never make physical contact with each other as they stroll. they don’t hold hands .
‘‘i wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he wasn’t capable of consent, ’’ she would later say in court. ‘‘i wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he wasn’t someone interested in reading books and talking about them. he was my best friend. ’’
the tricky balance struck between the starkness of george and ben’s situation and the emotional richness of their relationship has become a signature of sorts for love is strange ’s director ira sachs, who has made a name for himself with unflinching and unflinchingly romantic queer films, particularly the 2012 indie hit keep the lights on .
there is a famous saying, attributed to benjamin franklin, that guests are like fish: after three days they begin to stink. ira sachs' new film, love is strange, underlines the truth in franklin' s observation. this is a new york - set love story in which accommodation arrangements and rental prices play a very major part. beautifully observed and slow - burning, the film concentrates on aspects of relationships that other romantic dramas routinely ignore .
you sure do love your greenery. i respect that you’re very open about advocating the legalization of marijuana. what’s your favorite type of weed? bubblegum…
an achingly beautiful chamber piece about an older gay couple whose lives are upended by financial downturn, love is strange is remarkable because of an insistence on not making its headline - grabbing and boundary - pushing elements—this is the story of a same - sex relationship set against the backdrop of the legalization of same - sex marriage—seem remarkable at all .
something wonderful happens in the final minutes of
love is strange .
a careful, humble examination of a marriage opens up emotionally, thanks in large part to co - writer and director ira sachs' use of a gorgeous lullaby, chopin' s berceuse op. 57 in d - flat major. from the moment a key supporting ...
in 2011, her short film jan villa won the tiger award for short film at international film festival rotterdam, the ken burns award for best of the festival at the ann arbor film festival and the adolfas mekas award for best film at experimenta india. her debut feature strange love received the hubert bals fund for production in 2011 at international film festival rotterdam .
about halfway through love is strange, george (alfred molina) is greeted at the door by his husband, ben (john lithgow), and softly weeps on his shoulder. no explanation is given for his crying, but the moment is touching because by that point in this miraculously observant love story, we understand how well these two know each other — and how just the sight of the other’s face can trigger an emotional wellspring. it’s that secret language that exists between two people who’ve been together longer than they’ve been apart .
molina and lithgow are brilliant character actors who have given many very flamboyant performances on screen. think of molina, for example, in his tony hancock - like beret as joe orton' s lover (and eventual killer) kenneth halliwell in prick up your ears or of lithgow in drag in the world according to garp. in love is strange, both men are very restrained .
wow, i never would have guessed. on the topic of favorites, what’s your favorite film that you’ve done? kingpin. i love bill murray. he’s my brother .
here' s the latest and perhaps the silliest of the examples. a new film ,
love is strange ,
opens this week in chicago and has already begun its limited release in los angeles and new york. director and co - writer ira sachs' drama starring john lithgow and alfred molina has roughly as much on - screen sexuality as an episode of
modern family .
no matter how discreet and clothed its depictions ,
love is strange
is apparently just too gay for a pg - 13. there isn' t another way to read the mpaa' s actions. the mpaa doesn' t want to appear to be
soft
on potentially controversial content, though the film itself, a very good one, is about as controversial as cottage cheese .
the upcoming episode of the tlc show will also focus on an african - american albino named nathan hurd who makes a living as a comedian. but he remains unlucky with love !
as an artist, i am keen on gathering the living force within a community for the collective effort of cinema. this film entered people’s lives, as they entered the film in equal measure … boundaries blur, truth and fiction are intermingled. the introduction of fact does not necessarily make fiction more real, but possibly more strange. ajeeb aashiq / strange love asks viewers to embrace this formal and conceptual hybridism as a strategy meant not so much to dupe, mislead, or mock, but to offer an alternate lens and documenting tactic, one which may address the complex realities of identity, class and the politics of representation. natasha mendonca
in the end of the first indochina war, an open - minded teenage boy finds himself between the urge to discover love and the ever - present, dominating affection of his mother .
this debut feature from indian artist and curator natasha mendonca follows the intersecting lives of suman, a punk, jazz and slam poetry vocalist, and khush, a rickshaw driver in the process of transitioning to a male body. unrequited love, betrayal and friendship underlie a larger narrative of city hustle as suman explores what forms her artistic practice can take outside of the predominantly hetero - patriarchal bollywood industry and khush strives to make a working - class wage. through its intimate gaze, strange love investigates how attitudes toward sex and relationships are shaped by mainstream entertainment and how these longings cut across the class divide .
“he’s made several gay - themed films that are full of a lot of agony and torment, ” lithgow says. with love is strange and the relationship between ben and george, he had “literally set out to do a positive look at his own future. ” sachs had recently gotten married himself, lithgow says, and “wanted to project into the future what a long lasting, committed relationship would look like. ”
love is strange is an intermittently wonderful new film about an ageing manhattan couple who get hitched almost 40 years into their relationship, only for their suddenly straitened circumstances to force them to live apart for the first time. it’s a gentle and perceptive comedy - drama, so it’s rather a shock to find that the us ratings board, the motion picture association of america (mpaa), has given it an r rating .
they have decreed that love is strange should have the same rating as saw iii (“strong grisly violence and gore, sequences of terror and torture, nudity and language”), my bloody valentine (“graphic brutal horror violence and grisly images throughout, some strong sexuality, graphic nudity and language”), and the new sin city film (“strong brutal stylised violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use”) .
‘‘yes, [ d. j. ] wanted to be physically involved with me, and i wanted to be physically involved with him, ’’ anna said. but, she continued, ‘‘our relationship is not just about or primarily about the sex part. we love each other very, very, very much, and i wouldn’t have sex with somebody that i didn’t love. ’’
in the week when a judge struck down florida’s ban on same - sex marriage, describing it as “unconstitutional”, the ratings board cannot pretend any longer to be holding a mirror up to society – unless it is a mirror of the funhouse variety. the mpaa’s behaviour has revealed once again that it considers violence to be hunky - dory and torture tip - top. it is love, the message seems to be, which is strange .
love is strange isn' t intended as a polemical drama. it has the feel of an elliptical and enigmatic short story in which everything is implied rather than spelled out. sachs directs in an unfussy fashion that complements the performances. everything here is about subtext. casual conversations about moviegoing or schoolwork never mean quite what they seem. characters are terrified of saying directly what they feel. it' s the silences and the pained expressions of their faces which reveal their true emotions .
perhaps if
love is strange
had three or four fewer uses of the f - word and variations, it would' ve received a pg - 13. as is, though, seeing this gentle, easygoing picture go out with an r — the same rating as
sin city: a dame to kill for
and a hundred other insistently brutal products on the market — suggests to sachs
an uncomfortable relationship between the mpaa and the subject of the film. it also seems like sloppy work. you watch the film, it' s a story about family, about how people love as individuals but also as families, and what we teach our children about our values and beliefs .
the
love is strange
r rating is for language. the key offender is the word
mother - - - - - - ,
uttered three times in a brief exchange. also there are five
f' s
heard elsewhere. total: eight. for comparison' s sake, the film content evaluation site urltoken tallied
over 414 f - words and its derivatives
in last year' s
the wolf of wall street ,
also rated r, for a lot of reasons .
eight triple - threat dancer / singer / actors and a jazz trio perform visual, audio, sensory, theatrical, renditions of john coltrane & miles davis’ music that episodically explore the interior structures to the external appearances of courtship, intimacy and love”. each episode employs a combination of themes (stereotype, resistance, eroticism, terror, memory, violence and embarrassment) to incite a multifaceted investigation into what makes up the layered worlds of courtship, intimacy and love. the result is a series of human exchanges — made up of cryptic movement monologues, emotional physical dance theater and music & vocal riffs — that become scenes in each episode, expressing very personal perspectives on courtship, intimacy and love .
the mpaa’s ratings website insists that several instances of profanity in love is strange have earned the film its rating. but a likelier reason must be that its main characters are both men. they are played by two seasoned performers, john lithgow and alfred molina. these actors are not required to enjoy anything more passionate on screen than a peck on the cheek and a cosy (but fully clothed) cuddle. but it is precisely the undemonstrative normality of their relationship that seems to have inflamed the notoriously prickly and conservative ratings board .
it’s an insult to anyone’s intelligence to find that love is strange received its r for nothing more than “some strong language”. what – not even a teensy - weensy bit of terror and torture? no grisly images or graphic nudity? i wonder if the director, ira sachs, feels a bit like the faithful spouse accused erroneously of adultery: if he is going to be pilloried anyway, maybe he should have committed the crime for which he is being punished and thrown in a few chainsaw murders just for the hell of it .
when love is strange begins, george and ben are waking up next to each other, as they have for 39 years. they shower, dress, bicker, chide each other about being late, tell the other where his glasses are, tie the other’s tie, and hurry each other out of their gorgeous new york city apartment, lest they be late. “the best compliment i received about the movie was that somebody said, ‘you and john look so fucking married, ’” molina laughs. and they do. they look so fucking married .
strange love: episodes is conceived, choreographed and directed by nathan trice, written by nathan trice and charles de veaux, music direction by nick jost, vocal coach maritri garrett, cinematography by filmmaker vanja srdic, projection designs by ed stone french, lighting design eddie stockton, photography by judith stuart & ernesto mancebo, and costume design by david shen & keiko voltaire. the cast of multi - talented dancer / singers are: nathan trice, tendayi kuumba, ryoji sasamoto, makiko tamura, tiffany mellard, damani pompey, jaquez a. sims and karina ikezoe .
one of the strengths of this wise and lovely film is that it declines fully to answer these and other questions. the story of george and ben seems to have been plucked from a meadow of narrative possibilities; an interesting movie could have been made about everybody in this one. “love is strange” is mr. sachs’s fifth feature as a director, and its title would suit almost all of them. the strangeness here may have less to do with the affection that binds the central couple than with the ties of kinship and friendship between them and the rest of the characters .
in fact, played with all the lived - in heart, soul, affection, and hostility of a couple that’s been together for decades, the story of george (alfred molina) and ben (john lithgow) could very well be called love is normal .
in december 2012, nathan and his company of multi - talented artist completed a six month exploratory residency at freecandy, an intimate sixty - seat warehouse art / performance space located in the clinton - hill / bed - stuy area of brooklyn, ny. freecandy’s graffitied walls, neon painted antique & contemporary furniture and fixtures, and candled decorated bar with concocted drinks became the perfect setting for strange love: episodes. the combination of space and layered content rooted in trice’s episodic structure created an intimate, urban, gritty mood where the audience and performers proximity invoked an immersive voyeurism between one another .
that was the moment anna knew she couldn’t keep her feelings to herself. ‘‘i wanted to put my arms around him and say: ‘you can have that. i love you, ’ ’’ she later testified. a week later, at his afternoon day program, anna finally told d. j. how she felt. ‘‘i love you, too, ’’ he typed. she said she had known that for a long time, and he said he had known it, too. and then he typed, ‘‘so now what? ’’
so often when a film is made about a gay romance, the characters are young and promiscuous, or young and questioning, or young and in love, or young and trying to find themselves and their place in the world. mostly, though, they are young .
‘‘that broke my heart all over again, ’’ she said in court. ‘‘i said, ‘i’m in love with you the whole way. ’ then he said, ‘kiss me, ’ and i did. he said, ‘kiss me again. ’ i kissed him again. ’’
if you have seen leo mccarey' s 1937
make way for tomorrow
( a film orson welles declared
the saddest movie i have ever seen
) then this set - up will sound familiar. in some respects
love is strange
could be considered an unofficial remake. it has the same bittersweet heart, and the same almost urgent desire or demand that older people be treated with more respect. the couple in
make way for tomorrow
are split up for similar real estate - related reasons, have to bunk with their busy adult children, and find themselves disoriented in a lonely world without their partner .
in its oblique way, love is strange is exposing homophobic attitudes that persist in a seemingly liberal new york community. for all their seemingly progressive attitudes, elliot and kate can' t hide their dismay at the idea that their teenage son might be gay. ben and george become homeless partly because of their sexuality. if george had been heterosexual, he would never have lost his job. the irony is obvious. same - sex marriage became legal in new york in 2011. ben and george are delighted finally to take advantage of what seems to be a new - found tolerance – but marrying is the cause of all their subsequent problems .
a man who had been said to have the mental capacity of a toddler was now on the conference circuit and taking college classes. at last the world could get to know d. j. and understand his mind. ‘‘he’s an extremely ethical person — it’s one of the things that impressed me about him, ’’ anna said in court. ‘‘you know how you can meet somebody who’s extremely physically attractive, and then when you get to know them, they have such a horrible personality that they don’t really look attractive to you? it works the same way in reverse. if somebody has an interesting, engaging mind and good heart and a beautiful soul, that is transformative. it shows through, and you love the person. and so you love being close to them, and you love the body that they’re in, because that’s the body that they have. ’’
after many hours of discussion and several visits to the day program, anna finally convinced d. j. that she meant all that she had been saying. ‘‘o. k. , i believe you really do love me, ’’ he typed. ‘‘but are you physically attracted to me? ’’
like christian bale’s bruce wayne in “batman begins, ” dr. stephen strange comes by his powers on a pilgrimage to the east. an arrogant, wealthy surgeon whose hands are mangled in a car accident, he seeks healing from the ancient one (tilda swinton), leader of an order of martial - arts students as knowledgeable in string theory as swordsmanship. the initially snarky, tony stark - y strange becomes a believer when a. o. smacks his “astral form” out of his physical form, sending him barreling through a trippy, interdimensional rabbit hole whose visuals recall jodie foster’s space journey in “contact, ” improved with up - to - the - minute technology. this is the rare film that earns its 3 - d surcharge .
from the first moments we see them together — waking, washing and dressing in the manhattan apartment they have shared for decades — it is clear that ben (john lithgow) and george (alfred molina) are a walking illustration of the phrase “old married couple. ” they know each other so well and have adapted, graciously and sometimes a little fractiously, to each other’s peculiarities. state law, at long last, has caught up with the reality of their relationship: the first scenes in ira sachs’s “love is strange” take place on the morning of george and ben’s marriage, which is solemnized in an alfresco ceremony followed by a relaxed and lively party at home .
love is strange is the fifth feature by independent filmmaker ira sachs (forty shades of blue, keep the lights on), who is among the most perceptive and civilized of american directors. his beautifully intuitive script (written with mauricio zacharias) is a collection of snapshots. george moves in with his party - hearty downstairs neighbors (manny perez and cheyenne jackson), a gay cop couple dubbed ”the policewomen. ” ben, an artist who at 71 realizes that his paintings might never gain the acclaim he’s hoped for, shacks up with his nephew elliot (darren burrows) and elliot’s novelist wife (marisa tomei, essaying another one of her complex brooklyn dames) .
the story is elusive, with unexpected leaps in time comparable to boyhood. but like richard linklater’s masterpiece, love is strange is hardly plotless. the final act is punctuated by a major event, yet sachs is too smart a director to dwell on it. instead he aims away from the obvious and toward a poignant wordless denouement involving ben’s 15 - year - old great - nephew (the revelatory charlie tahan of 2010’s charlie st. cloud). it’s one final nuanced decision in a movie loaded with them. sachs, molina, and lithgow have given adult moviegoers a perfect piece of summer counterprogramming — a warm, humane, resplendent romance to savor while our days are still long. a
with a mischievous, metaphysical flourish, “doctor strange” administers some much - needed cpr to the flagging superhero genre. it doesn’t reinvent the wheel — a power - hungry villain (mads mikkelsen) tries to unleash hell on earth, blah blah blah — but it’s a heck of a lot more fun than i’ve had at a marvel movie lately. plus, who could be more perfectly suited to the moniker than benedict cumberbatch, who’s always exuded strangeness ?
the xuxa invasion will hit mainstream america with a style and flair that seems light - years from mr. rogers' neighborhood. xuxa' s show is as latin american as tango and bossa nova with lots of hugging and kissing and talk about spiritual well - being. xuxa' s style is to distribute kisses like candy and transmit a real
i love you
feel .
in syracuse, i met several people who started with f. c. and later learned to type without support, including jamie burke, a young man who once worked with rosemary crossley and now spelled out his words to me with no one touching him. his messages were somewhat cryptic: ‘‘law of fair and just, ’’ he wrote, and also, ‘‘i love challenging my correction. ’’
love is strange
is not showily directed, and yet there are touches throughout that help ground us in the characters' inner lives. george coaches a young music student on her
interpretation
of chopin (chopin' s music fills the soundtrack), and as she tries the piece again, the music intensifies his personal drama, and he' s so overcome that he has to turn away to hide his tears. joey stands on the landing of an apartment stairwell clutching a skateboard, crying by himself. beyond the window is the green of the courtyard. the camera does not move; neither does the boy. he just stands there, crying for as long as he feels like crying, then getting himself together and continuing on down the stairs. it' s a caesura, potent and powerful, unhurried and true. by that point in the story, we need it as badly as joey does .
a perfect summary! i’d love to know more about these morally unjust decisions of his. what kind of dirt does he get into? sex? drugs? parties? enquiring minds want to know. all of the above! there is actually a really good party scene in the film where i go to a rave. i get a little fucked up and end up stuffing my face with food until i puke .
before anna showed up at d. j. ’s house that memorial day in 2011, she warned him that his mother and brother might be upset by their relationship. they might even ban her from seeing him, she said, and as his legal guardians, they had the right to do so. ‘‘they would never do that to me, ’’ d. j. typed back. ‘‘they love me too much. ’’
“it’s a story about a relationship and the fact that they’re gay men, in a way, is almost irrelevant, ” molina tells me, a sentiment that’s certainly echoed by his co - star. “it’s just a beautiful portrait of love, taking the sexual part out of it, ” lithgow says. that matter - of - factness is what makes the film so great—and the circumstances behind its bleak narrative so infuriating and timely .
anna and her husband married in june 1989, when she was still a teenager in college and roger was 24, a tuba player for the detroit symphony orchestra. they had a son six years later and a daughter a few years after that. in 2010, when anna first began to fall in love with d. j. , she and her family were living in a modest house in west orange, n. j .
“i remember thinking that, as a straight man, the thought of walking down the street with someone i love and not holding their hand or be able to link arms or feel easy about putting my arm around them — i can’t even imagine how that feels, ” molina says. “so to be able to live with that and still be able to make a relationship work and still have value and meaning is extraordinary to me. ”
given the strange tension in the room, i felt it necessary to break the ice and mention to him that i was a big fan and, in fact, a little nervous. he said, “don’t be” and jumped off the edge of the couch, placing himself on the seat, removing his slippers, and stretching his legs out across the table in front of me—gyrating and rubbing his socked feet mere centimeters from my knees as he glared. after a minute or two of fumbling with my iphone recorder, i finally managed to start the interview .
love is strange takes its tempo from the chopin and beethoven piano music that we hear unobtrusively on the soundtrack. there are very few big climactic moments. the most dramatic event in the movie isn' t even shown on screen. instead, sachs concentrates on the everyday problems that his characters face. when they sell the apartment they can no longer afford, ben and george are forced to live separately while they look for somewhere else. george stays with neighbours while ben moves in with his nephew elliot (darren burrows), elliot' s kind - hearted novelist wife, kate (marisa tomei), and their teenage son joey (charlie tahan). it seems like the perfect arrangement… for about three days, until benjamin franklin' s fish problem begins to apply. ben' s presence in an already cramped apartment quickly irks his new hosts. he himself is uncomfortable. as he puts it ,
sometimes, when you live with people, you know them better than you care to .
poor richard
( aka ben franklin) observed in his almanack centuries ago that
fish and visitors stink after three days .
the people in
love is strange
who take in ben and george experience that upsetting truth. ben crashes with his nephew elliott (darren e. burrows), an busy video producer who is rarely home, and his wife, kate (marisa tomei), a novelist struggling with her next book. they have an awkward teenage son named joey (charlie tahan) who only has one friend, a swaggering russian kid named vlad (eric tabach). ben is removed from his familiar environment, his partner and his cherished routines, and starts to deteriorate. george has a little bit more emotional resilience, but he begins to fall apart too, staying with a much - younger gay couple (cheyenne jackson and manny perez) who both work for the nypd. george tries to sleep on the couch in a party house atmosphere, with
game of thrones
marathons and people coming and going .
american director ira sachs' work is clearly a movie made for devotees of reflective film and not mainstream box office. sachs also co - produced and writes this account of disparate relationships. the fabricated arrangement gives way to some admittedly contrived situations manufactured in the interest of extracting a reaction. alfred molina and john lithgow are extraordinarily good as the displaced couple. they lend a gravity to their characters that raise this chronicle to a higher level. despite the narrative' s handling of the hot button topic of same sex marriage, the real story exploits genuine emotion as it deals with the many - sided personalities in an extended family. this is a subtle production that has universal appeal. whether they' re singing at a piano to guests at a party or reflecting on what has become of their lives in separate bunk beds, molina and lithgow give nuanced performances. yet the script accomplishes so much more. love is strange is a well written drama that beautifully handles the observational insights of a family tree and the way a simple crisis affects its many branches. urltoken
but when george climbs into bed with ben midway through the film and the two characters just hold each other, with all the comfort and feeling of men who have been in love for 40 years, it was a portrayal of a gay relationship that i don’t think i had ever seen before on screen. i can’t think of another example of older, settled gay film characters long into their lives that young gay people could look at and think, “one day i hope that my partner and i will be like that, like them. ”
later that afternoon, i met a 20 - year - old man named john who had a prominent underbite. john had been assessed as having the mental capacity of a 3 - year - old, but using f. c. he could write poetry. his father handed me some printouts of john’s writing (‘‘the place to discover the ember of love is worlds away but so close / in the land of the nonverbal autistic’’), then grabbed john’s finger so we could have a direct exchange. ‘‘know that we are intelligent, ’’ john’s finger typed into the keyboard .
what is even more disquieting for each is the revelation that, agonising though the situation is, it can work – after a fashion. they can get by. their love is real enough, but they can function as individuals, as single people. it is as if they are young again – messy and troublesome kids living with their parents, meeting up for dates and illicit sex, yet what they are concealing is not their sexuality but the fear of disaster, the fear of ending their days in poverty and failure, with the relationship that they thought was the bedrock of their existence shattered, almost casually .
“you look at a couple like that and realize that they’d been together for maybe 40 or 50 years in a society that regards them as second - class citizens, ” lithgow says. “and in order for them to stay together, just be with the person they love, they’ve had to more or less live with that and accept it, and be grateful for what they get in return, which is intimacy with each other. ” lithgow’s next observation is one that had a shattering effect on both actors: “but, if they walk down the street with each other, they don’t touch. they don’t hold hands. ”
they went back and forth on this question. ‘‘he grilled me on how much i really loved him, how committed i was to him, how i felt about my husband, ’’ anna wrote in an account of their relationship that she compiled six months later at her lawyer’s request. d. j. wanted to know if she would someday marry him. ‘‘i said: ‘please, i love you very much, but please don’t ask me that just now. i need time to think through everything. ’ he said that he was sorry. he didn’t mean to push that hard. it was childish of him. ’’
when she arrived at the house on memorial day in 2011, anna didn’t know what d. j. planned to do. his brother, wesley, was working in the garden, so she went straight inside to speak with d. j. and his mother, p. they chatted for a while at the dining table about d. j. ’s plans for school and for getting his own apartment. then there was a lull in the conversation after wesley came back in, and anna took hold of d. j. ’s hand. ‘‘we have something to tell you, ’’ they announced at last. ‘‘we’re in love. ’’
all the guests had themselves made a kind of commitment: to redouble their friendship and love for the happy couple. but no one could have imagined how soon they would be expected to redeem this pledge. george is fired from his job by church authorities who disapprove of the gay wedding, though they were happy enough with the deniable hypocrisy of his merely having a roommate. unable to meet their mortgage payments, these two men suffer an unthinkable catastrophe: in what they imagined to be the comfortable evening of their lives, they become homeless refugees, having to split up temporarily and live separately with two sets of friends who, with strained generosity, take them in .
anna has never wavered in her claim that she and d. j. fell in love and that his messages were his. even after she was indicted, she seemed more concerned about his fate than her own. ‘‘in the spring of 2011, [ d. j. ’s ] access to his means of communication was taken from him, ’’ she wrote in a chapter for a recent academic book, which was published while the justice system creaked its way toward trial, ‘‘and he is once again treated as severely intellectually impaired by those who have control over his life. this chapter is dedicated to him, in hope that he will one day regain his voice and his freedom. ’’
love is strange should have been better than it is. interesting story and premise, but something was left out. don' t know if scenes were cut out or maybe never even filmed, but it' s quite disappointing and it could have been so good. acting is above par for the most part, especially marisa tomei. two two lead actors couldn' t have been better, but they weren' t given much to work with. fair cinematography and editing and the music score score was a nice touch and fit well with the malina character, him being a music instructor. what doesn' t ring true is that they had to separate by living in different places. very phone in that respect. the two gay cops were not necessary and their parties they threw were more for college co - eds than grown adults. did not make sense. more annoying was the accent on the nephew. the whole ending centered around him which was ludicrous. a very serious mistake was when the nephew was waiting for ben to come home. he' s waiting in front of the apartment with nothing but his skateboard in hand. once they get into the apartment and talk for a few minutes, the nephew hands him a large paper painting! ! how in the hell did the painting get into the apartment as the kid only had his skateboard. didn' t the writers, director, the camera people, the crew or even the actors question this huge mistake? ? then again, the boy leaves and the camera stays on him a good couple of minutes as he cries! ! fair first act and very poor second act and ending .
but the family had had enough. what at first struck them as a miracle — a voice for d. j. , his inner self revealed — now seemed a fraud. d. j. could not have given his consent to any love affair, they later told the authorities, because he suffers from profound mental disabilities, just as the psychologists had always told them. his ‘‘messages’’ must have been a sham. if anna pretended otherwise, it was only so she could use d. j. as a guinea pig for research, or to further her career, or because, as wesley would later say during the three - week trial for sexual assault that concluded this month in newark, ‘‘she was having some sick, twisted fantasy. ’’
in spite of being set largely in cramped city apartments and having little in the way of obvious dramatic action, the film never feels stilted or stagy. like the music pieces that george so admires, it strikes its own graceful and quietly insistent rhythm. sachs is dealing with pivotal moments in his characters' lives: love, marriage, illness and enforced separation. it portrays new york in a double - edged fashion. at one stage, we see it from ben' s point of view as he paints from a rooftop at dusk. it looks quite magical, a city for romance, but if you can' t find a place with a controlled rent or you' re a guest outstaying a welcome or your health is failing, it can be a very brutal place indeed.
love strange love ( portuguese : amor estranho amor ) is a 1982 brazilian erotic drama film written and directed by walter hugo khouri . the film stars vera fischer , tarcísio meira and xuxa meneghel . fischer won the best actress award at the 15th festival de brasília as well as the air france award . 
love strange love (portuguese: amor estranho amor) is a 1982 brazilian erotic drama film written and directed by walter hugo khouri. the film stars vera fischer, tarcísio meira and xuxa meneghel. fischer won the best actress award at the 15th festival de brasília as well as the air france award.
love strange love (portuguese: amor estranho amor) is a 1982 brazilian erotic drama film written and directed by walter hugo khouri. the film stars vera fischer, tarcísio meira and xuxa meneghel. fischer won the best actress award at the 15th festival de brasília as well as the air france award.