Love is Strange (2014)

By Dan Clendenin.

           Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) had lived together for thirty-nine years when they finally got married. For that good deed of fidelity, George lost his job as a music teacher at his church, which in turn meant that they could no longer afford their Manhattan apartment. So they live separately while they look for new housing. All this happens in the first fifteen minutes of the film, after which the story loses its focus. George moves to the floor below with two cops, and endures loud parties. Ben moves to Brooklyn and observes that when you live with friends you get to know them better than you might wish. They look for new housing. They miss each other. There is Sturm und Drang around the temperamental teenage son with whom Ben shares his bunk bed, and who is the focus of the final minutes of the film. The most interesting thing about this story of an elderly gay couple is that their lives look and feel very quotidian, like just about all of us. This film won awards at Sundance, Tribeca, Berlin, and Los Angeles film festivals.