Love is Strange is already gathering early steam from its screening at Sundance.
AO Scott’s Critics Pick review:
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.
Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers:
In a summer of movie romances, Love Is Strange is the one that cuts deepest. Without the usual bull and spackled-on sentiment, it hits you like a shot in the heart. Director Ira Sachs, who wrote the subtly nuanced script with Mauricio Zacharias, intuitively knows where attention must be paid.
James Rocchi at The Playlist:
If “Love Is Strange” were nothing more than as showcase for its performances, it would still be superlative; Lithgow and Molina are perfect not just as Ben and George, but also as the combination they make with each other. It has been noted that early couples say “I love you” with the force of a thousand exploding suns, but that long-standing couples say “I love you” in a way that can also ask, unspoken, if it was you who happened to leave the goddamn garage door open again. That kind of love is rarely seen on film, and hard to portray when it is; Molina and Lithgow make that happen here, with all of the feeling and fights and closeness that a real couple would have.
