'Love Is Strange' actors John Lithgow and Alfred Molina overcome a contrived plot
In 'Love Is Strange,' Lithgow and Molina have a marvelous, easygoing chemistry.
'Love Is Strange' stars Alfred Molina.
Jeong Park/Sony Pictures Classics/AP
John Lithgow and Alfred Molina have a marvelous, easygoing chemistry in Ira Sachs’s “Love Is Strange,” playing a long-term gay couple who get married only to find themselves suddenly living apart when George (Molina), a music teacher at a New York parochial school, is fired from his job. Encamped in separate households until they can cobble together the resources for a new apartment, the two men intermittently reunite while trying to cope with their disruptive new living arrangements.
The living-apart scenario is contrived – there was no way for these men to share a space somewhere? – but the two actors are so good that it doesn’t much matter. Grade: B+ (Rated R for language.)