Movie Review: Little Men

Little Men

Directed by: Ira Sachs.

Written by: Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias.

Starring: Greg Kinnear (Brian Jardine), Paulina García (Leonor Calvelli), Jennifer Ehle (Kathy Jardine), Theo Taplitz (Jake Jardine), Michael Barbieri (Tony Calvelli), Talia Balsam (Audrey), Alfred Molina (Hernan).

 

Little Men is a delicate, controlled film – one fraught with emotions that the characters struggle to maintain. In most films like this, you would expect things to descend into yelling and histrionics – but because the film is directed (and co-written) by Ira Sachs, it never does. He has a talent in taking melodramatic situations and keeping them on an even keel – not allowing them to become soap operas. His last film, Love is Strange (2014), was a kind of update on Leo McCarey’s 1937 classic Make Way for Tomorrow – where an elderly couple had to move with separate children when they lose their home and none of their children can deal with both of them. McCarey’s film is a melodrama to be sure – but a restrained one (especially for the time). Love is Strange is even more restrained – as it chronicles the lives of its gay couple at the center – played brilliantly by Alfred Molina and John Lithgow – as they lose what they have built together. Sachs does McCarey one better – he doesn’t see anyone in the film as the bad guy (unlike the ungrateful children in Make Way for Tomorrow) – but rather as well-meaning people who, because they live in New York, barely have the space for themselves let alone anyone else. Little Men takes the same approach.

 

The story here is about two families. Brian (Greg Kinnear), is an actor, who makes no money, and allows his wife, Kathy (Jennifer Ehle) to support him and their 13 year old son, Jake (Theo Taplitz), When Brian’s father dies, he inherits his old brownstone in Brooklyn – and it’s a step up for the family from their cramped Manhattan apartment. The catch is that the lower part of building is a storefront – which Leonor (Paulina Garcia) has been renting from Brian’s father for years to run her dress shop. Brian’s father never increased her rent – which is now an absurdly low $1,100 per month – in a changing neighborhood, where a similar space could fetch up to $5,000. To this basic setup, Sachs introduces more complications – Jake is a quiet, shy, artistic boy, clumsy and unathletic, with trouble making friends. But, he immediately bonds with Tony (Michael Barbieri), Leonar’s son, who is Jake’s opposite in many ways – outgoing, athletic, etc. The two bond over video games, and their own artistic ambitions – Jake draws, Tony wants to be an actor. Then there is Brian’s sister Audrey (Talia Balsam) – who wants Leonor to either start paying the right rent, or get out. In many movies, she’d be the villain – but she isn’t here – she may seem rather heartless towards Leonor – but her point is valid. After all, Brian and his family gets to live in a big new apartment when their father died. What did she get?

 

Paulina Garcia’s performance as Leonor is one of the best you’ll see this year. There is a quiet fury about her – and she doesn’t act the way Brian and his family expect her to. She is stubborn to a fault – and can actually be downright cruel to Brian. She hasn’t had a contract with Brian’s father for years – they were friends, she didn’t need one – but that has left her unprotected. When Brian approaches her with a new lease – asking for more money – she pretty much refuses to respond. She belittles him – knowing precisely what buttons to push to get under his skin, and expose his insecurities. What she says reveals perhaps why Brian didn’t see much of his father in the last few years of his life. Again, though, Leonor isn’t the “bad guy” in the movie either – she’s merely fighting for her life, her store, her livelihood. She cannot pay more in rent – she barely makes enough even with the low rent – so she fights with the only weapons she has at her disposal.

 

While this low-key melodrama between the adults is going on, the two boys grow closer – we see how they interact with each other, their small, unsure steps towards girls. The two young actors are completely natural and unforced – we see them together, and how different they are then when they are around people – how unguarded. That kind of instant connection that runs deep for kids that age – and that they may never get back again. Through no fault of their own, they’re drawn into the world of their parents – all of the adults try to protect the children from the reality, but eventually, it’s going to come through. The final shots in the movie are sad in a way it’s tough to put your finger on – something has been lost for both of these kids – and they’re not going to be able to get it back.

 

Sachs makes the kind of films that don’t immediately impress upon the viewer just how good, how deep they are. You don’t come out of his films with your mind blown, raving about what you’ve just seen. Yet, what he does do is make films that haunt you afterwards – for days, weeks, months even, you find your thoughts drifting back to them. That’s the kind of film Little Men is – and that’s a rare thing.

Movie Review: Love is Strange

Love is Strange
Directed by: Ira Sachs.
Written by: Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias.
Starring: John Lithgow (Ben), Alfred Molina (George), Darren E. Burrows (Elliot), Marisa Tomei (Kate), Charlie Tahan (Joey), Harriet Sansom Harris (Honey), Cheyenne Jackson (Ted), Manny Perez (Roberto), Christina Kirk (Mindy), John Cullum (Father Raymond), Eric Tabach (Vlad).

Love is Strange is beautiful, sensitive film – one that at first seems like it could be preachy, message film, but ends up being much smarter than that. It stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as Ben and George – a couple who have been together for nearly 40 years, and as the film opens are finally about to get married. It is a lovely, small, quiet ceremony and reception – surrounded by family and friends, all of whom love both Ben and George, and the feeling is reciprocated. But it isn’t long before George is called into his boss office – the Catholic School where he works has long since known he was gay – and do the kids he teaches, and their parents, and no one cares. But now that George has gotten married – world leaked to the Archdiocese, and George loses his job. The two don’t have a lot of money – and are forced to rely on the kindness of their friends and family for a place to stay, as they figure out what their next step should be.

The movie will remind cinephiles of two of the best films ever made – Yasajiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), and the film that inspired that one, Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) – more than later than the former. As in that film, the central couple has to be split up, and live in different places while they try to find a place for them together. Ben moves in with his nephew, Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and their teenage son, Joey (Charlie Tahan) – who isn’t happy that he has to share his room with a 70 year old gay man. George moves in with the pair of gay cops who lived beneath Ben and George’s old apartment – but while they are well meaning, they are also several decades younger that George, given to all night parities, and constant visitors – when all George wants is some peace and quiet.

Co-written and directed by Ira Sachs, the film wears its influences on it sleeve – but slowly becomes its own movie as it moves along. The movie keeps its central couple apart for the majority of the film – which works well for it. The film contrasts their ease with other in that first sequence – on their wedding day, and a closing sequence, where the pair reunite for a night out on the town, where they reminisce about their life together (which sounds like it was as idyllic as it seemed) – with the scenes where the couple have been separated, which are much more awkward – especially the scenes with Ben and his family. While the film clearly feels a deep sympathy for Ben – essentially losing his apartment and his husband in one foul swoop in his later years, it also acknowledges just how annoying he can be those around him, even when he doesn’t realize it. He is trying to be friendly of course – but a teenage boy doesn’t want an elderly relative living with them at all, and Marisa Tomei’s Kate is a writer, trying to work from home, who bends over backwards to be polite – but eventually cannot take it anymore.

The two lead performances are both excellent – truly among the best performances in the careers of Lithgow and Molina. Neither actor is one that I normally associate with subtlety – they both go gloriously over the top more often than not. Here though, they underplay their characters – especially when they are together, where the whole of their relationship is shown in just body language. The film never really pushes for false drama, and doesn’t really force these characters into a plot of any real consequence. While the film certainly has a message – a sad one, about how no matter how accepting most are of gay marriage, it still needs to be better – but the film doesn’t beat you over the head with it, preferring instead of take a subtler route. And by the end of the movie, the film doesn’t even feel like a message movie at all – but something all the more heartfelt – and that’s because that is exactly what it has become.

Movie Review: Keep the Lights On

Keep the Lights On
Directed by: Ira Sachs.
Written by: Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias.
Starring: Thure Lindhardt (Erik Rothman), Zachary Booth (Paul Lucy), Julianne Nicholson (Claire),Souleymane Sy Savane (Alassane), Paprika Steen (Karen), Miguel del Toro (Igor).

There is a certain degree of irrationality involved in any relationship. No matter how long you are with someone, you never truly know them. You can understand them and love them, but everyone has their own private experience and thoughts, that make them somewhat of a mystery to even those closest to them. Keep the Lights On is a movie about relationship between Erik and Paul that last a decade, and yet Erik never truly understands Paul – never figures out who he is. Watching the movie you cannot help but think that Erik wasted ten years of his life.

They meet in 1998, through a phone sex line. Erik (Thure Lindhardt) does this often – sometimes meeting other gay men he doesn’t much care for, but he does enjoy the anonymous sex. One day, the hookup he sets up is with Paul (Zachary Booth) and the two share an instant connection. Paul warns him right off though that he has a girlfriend, so he shouldn’t expect much. The first half of that sentence may be a lie – we certainly never meet a girlfriend – but the second part is the truth. Erik shouldn’t expect much from Paul. But he does anyway.

Erik is a documentary filmmaker, whose rich family supports his career, as he makes films that few people will ever eventually see, and spends years on each of them. Paul is a literary agent, and reminds Erik that some people actually have to work for a living – go into the office day in, day out and make money. So it’s somewhat surprising that it isn’t Erik who falls into drug addiction, but Paul. Paul disappears for days at a time, and Erik frantically searches New York for him each and every time – and takes him back each and every time too, no matter what Paul has done. This goes on for years – the two fight, break-up, get back together, and on and on and on.

The film was co-written and directed by Ira Sachs, who based the movie on one of his own long term relationships, that eventually came to an end. The movie is an insightful look into the changing nature of the gay scene in New York from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. And it is also a sympathetic portrait of Erik (who, of course, is the character Sachs based on himself). Erik is a nice guy – an intelligent guy – who has a supportive group of friends and family, who constantly try and talk him out taking Paul back – but Erik will not listen to reason. It is to Thure Lindhardt’s credit that he makes Erik into such a sympathetic character, even though I cannot be the only audience member who gets frustrated with him for not seeing Paul in a clear light. I also liked the visual look of the film – drained of color, the cinematography takes on a sad look. And this is not a movie that shies away from the more intimate details of gay sex, which is somewhat refreshing, since most movies still only have gay characters to be the wacky, sexless best friend of the female protagonist.

But there is a gaping hole at the center of Keep the Light On – and that’s Paul. Who is this guy? The movie offers no insight into who he is or why he does what he does. But perhaps that is the point. If Ira Sachs could not figure out his lover in the 10 years they were together, why should I expect him to figure out Paul in this movie? Still, the question gnawed on me throughout the movie. What we are left with is a portrait of a one sided relationship – where Erik does everything for Paul and gets nothing in return, and because of that, he pretty much wastes ten years of his life. How sad.