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Love is Strange

Love is Strange

Out director/co-writer Ira Sachs’ thoughtful, wistful film, “Love is Strange,” concerns a couple — George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) — who have been together 39 years. The men marry in the opening moments, but spend most of the rest of the film apart. After the wedding, George is fired from his job at a Catholic school, which causes them to lose their apartment. Watching these men who love each other, but who must live apart, forms the emotional core of this authentic, observational drama.

“It’s a film about intimacy, and about the possibility of love to grow with time,” says the soft-spoken Sachs “It’s called ‘Love Is Strange’ for a reason: Every intimate relationship is different from the next. Every stage of our lives, we experience love in a different way.”

iraThe writer/director emphasizes character and mood over plot, a narrative strategy that keeps the audience engaged. A series of lovely scenes depict how George, Ben, and their friends and family members interact. The filmmaker depicts what he calls “the seasons of life” in his chamber drama, and he expresses empathy for all his characters.

“These are good people who can still manage to hurt each other,” Sachs observes. “That is the texture that I am most interested in, the nuance of intimacy. All my previous films are about the nature of relationships and the likelihood of relationships destroying everyone involved. A lot of my films have been about lies and what is hidden and, for the most part, this is not that film.“

He continues, “Love Is Strange is more about responsibility and what we choose to do with other people. How much we are there for the people we are closest to. I really try not to judge anyone in the film, nor myself, for the complicated questions: Who do we take care of? Who do we take in? What is our responsibility?”

Sachs’ points about caring and responsibility extend to the depiction of George and Ben’s marriage in the film. Gay marriage here is used more to define the couple’s union and their lives together, and less as a legal act, despite the conflict caused by the Catholic Church.

“‘Love Is Strange’ is about two people who face conflict and thus grow stronger together. It’s a drama of separation,” Sachs insists. “What they were separated from was being in bed together: physical intimacy in private space. So when you do see them in bed together, it reveals the history more than anything else.”

He concluded, “It’s a film about the beauty of love. I wanted the audience to get a laser sharp view of the history of this relationship, and understand in a moment that it had its passages and its acts. The heart of the film is about intimacy, the structure of building a life together with another human being. Love is not simple, and intimacy is complex.”

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