Love is Strange.

I came across the Memphis born film director Ira Sachs via his second feature film Forty Shades of Blue (2005). The movie starred the beautiful Russian actress Dina Korzun in which she played a trophy wife to Rip Thorns ageing music producer. Also featured in this movie was Darren E Burrows who coincidently appears in Sachs latest outing the romantic drama Love is Strange (2014), a character study of a gay couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when that decide to get married after living together for 39 years.

 

Wedding Day.

This LGBT movie extends a successful genre to include a love story about two late middle-aged men. George (Alfred Molina) is sacked by the Catholic school were he has successfully worked for a number of years as a music teacher. His relationship with the 72-year-old Ben (John Lithgow) was well known by the staff, the pupils and their parents, and until they were legally married nothing had ever been said about their relationship. Now the Bishop wants him out after spotting their wedding photo’s on Facebook! Because of this change of circumstances their finances are very stretched and they realise that they will have to sell their Manhattan apartment, as they are unable to afford the mortgage. This leads to a crisis! George moves in with his neighbours, two gay policeman who love to party, and Ben stays with his nephew Elliot  (Burrows), Elliot's wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and shares a room with their teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan), both George and Ben are not happy with this new arrangement as they are forced to live apart.

 

Uncle Ben shares with family....

....while George shares with friends.

Sachs, who recently got married to his long-term partner, based many of the films characters on real life people and he portrays the two older middle class Academics as being very much in love and successfully pulls it off. The film has been described as a 'graceful tribute to the beauty of commitment in the face of adversity' and to that I would add meaningful and sincere. It's well written script gives the films cast a chance to excel and with some great cinematography from Christos Voudouris gives a depth to a story that at times is both sad and moving at the same time casting a warm glow over its watching audience who are treated to a rather agreeable love story.

Forty Shades of Blue.

Trophy Wife.

Not only did Dina Korzun's ground breaking performance come to my notice in Last Resort (2000) but also to the independent Memphis born film director Ira Sachs. So impressed was he with the Chekhov Moscow Arts Theatre stage actress that he cast her in the leading role of Laura in his character driven drama Forty Shades of Blue (2005) Korzun plays the young and beautiful Russian trophy wife of the much older Alan James (Rip Torn in an energetically powered performance).  James is a highflying Memphis record producer who drinks and parties with the upper echelons of the local music scene and regularly plays away from home. Laura does not seem to object to Alan’s philandering, appearing quite content, living in their spacious mansion and looking after their young son Sam. This seemingly fragile arrangement is shattered with the arrival of Alan James’s estranged adult son Michael (Darren Burrows) who has not seen his father for five years.

Philandering Husband.

Ira Sachs took six years to complete his script creating the outline of the story based on his father who divorced his mother when his was eight years old, although the characters in the movie are completely different. Compelled by a female narrative the central focus is on Korzun’s character, a female out of step with her own society, an outsider. The perfectly cast Russian actress imparts a memorizing presence on screen adding a texture to the role and carrying the film, the wrong actress in this part would has ruined the ambiance of the movie. She was nominated for Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards and the film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Estranged Son.