Thoughts on Love is Strange

    On Hulu I watched the 2014 film Love is Strange, directed by Ira Sachs, co-written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, and starring John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, and Marisa Tomei. I loved this movie, it just felt funny and realistic and lived-in. Lithgow and Molina play a couple, Ben and George, who have been together for almost 40 years, and finally are able to get married. Then George (Molina) gets fired from his music teacher job at a Catholic school for discriminatory reasons (they “tolerated” him being gay with a partner, but objected at him marrying and posting honeymoon pictures online, wanting him to stay quiet about being gay), and without income and Ben’s job as an artist, they have to sell their apartment, and are unprepared for the then-current high costs of NYC real estate and rent, being priced out of a city they love. They’re able to stay with family and friends, but due to limited space, they must live apart after they just got married. Ben goes to stay with his nephew and his family, sleeping on the bottom bunk in a teen boy’s room, while George sleeps on the couch at a younger couple’s place, where they frequently have late night parties and he feels too old for it.

    It’s a movie about a couple just trying to deal with financial challenges while living apart, feeling out of place in the homes they’re in, facing struggles with NYC housing, including Ben being in his 70s with heart issues, and trying to work something out while still being a deeply loving couple.

    Lithgow and Molina are great in this film, and have wonderful chemistry together, where I can believe the history between them. Molina is especially good in this, and it’s nice hearing his natural English accent. And I liked how Marisa Tomei, as Ben’s nephew’s wife, is trying to keep it together to work on writing her novel while Ben is an unintentional distraction, babbling a lot, and looking like she’s going to crack.

    I’m glad I watched this, it’s a lovely little gem of a film.