Love Is Strange - not as good as the song by Mickey and Sylvia

Love Is Strange is a sweet, sensitive domestic drama with likable characters and a few powerful scenes but in the end there just isn't much too it - the emphasis on domestic, not on drama. I kept wanting the movie to break out into some real dramatic confrontation, but everything here is soft and muted. That could be OK if it felt like a realistic drama, but unfortunately the plot is a little creaky and the director, Ira Sachs, has a penchant for quick solutions and self-consciously weepy scenarios. In short, the movie is about a gay couple - Ben and George - who've been together in Manhattan for about 40 years and now are getting married; as a result of the marriage, however, the Catholic school where George teaches music, fires him - his confrontation w/ the priest who does so is one of the stronger scenes in the movie. Shortly afterward - we jump ahead rather freely in time at various points in the movie - Ben and George have get rid of their apartment, as they can no longer afford the rent. (As an aside, this is another in the long line of movies that have absolutely no idea how to film an ordinary Manhattan apartment - the various interiors in the film that are meant to be affordable NYC places are palatial by Manhattan standards.) Oddly, they have absolutely no place to go, and they hit on friends and relatives to put them up; nobody has room for two, so Ben and George live separately for a time (seems extremely odd and unlikely - both that they would separate and that they have no friends who can help); we mostly follow Ben, and his relation w/ his sister-in-law, Marissa Tomei as the least-likely budding novelist I've ever seen, and his nephew. I won't give away any endings, but will only say that a # of the interesting plot lines - is the nephew involved in a homosexual relationship? - are left dormant and the housing solution that George works out is preposterous. In the end, we're left with some long, arty, moody shots and a feeling of wistfulness and lingering sorrow. It's a movie whose heart is in the right place, but the the flame is set on simmer.