Love After Love

I have seen enough films at this point to know while watching it that this was one of the first films Russell Harbaugh directed. I knew this because first, there were several instances in which scenes interrupted other scenes without rhyme or reason. This implies that several scenes were, in my opinion, cut short. There were also times when the camera lingered too long on a subject, e.g., Andie McDowell. Related to this was the omission of what probably should have been included, specifically, the consequences of every time Chris O'Dowd's character, Nicholas, cheated on his then lover. In both cases, he just moved along, and whatever consequence there was, was minimal, and the film just progressed to his next involvement.

Then, there is the story line. I kept seeing an elephant in the room that no one was talking about and that was the Oedipal thing going on between Andie M. and Chris O'Dowd, as mother and son. Perhaps another film will grow out of this subject that was glaringly there and ignored. It almost felt as if the writer/director couldn't decide what should be the main story line, the emotional aftermath of the death of a family's husband/father, or the Oedipal relationship between the mother and son of that family which was highlighted once the father died.

Overall, as someone who can never watch too many "relationship movies", I am glad I saw Love After Love and look forward to Harbaugh's next.

The movie purports to be about grief. What we see is all the dysfunction expressed as projected rage, alcoholism, and all the function as "getting on with it." What we don't see is how the "grief" has transformed these people. We never get to see them transform. For all we know we may not be seeing just grief but personalities that have always been that way. It ain't pretty for the son's who dissolve into childishness, and it's hopeful for the widow who hews to maturity. It certainly does not paint a nice picture of liberal elitists.

Two minor quibbles: Why do people in these kinds of character study films always have glamorous jobs? And the sheer number of sex scenes detracts from the film. Most people Andie MacDowell's age don't look anything like Andie MacDowell. Otherwise, well done.

Love After Love should continue the prepositional phrase forever because the major players in this finely wrought drama are forever looking for love or grieving about it. Matriarch Suzanne (Andie MacDowell) loses her husband and wanders around her two sons almost in a fog of grief but maybe more in puzzlement about how they are working out their fates without her influence.

They are flawed adults, like womanizing son, Nicholas (Chris O'Dowd), who has a conflicted intimacy with his mother but more with himself as he wanders among showing the greatest puppy eyes in cinema. He is an emblem of the players who never seem at peace with their current or future partners.

This episodic, fragmented story, whose jumping back and forth in time is occasionally disorienting, in its unsympathetic way, reveals the puzzle-like lives of sentient beings who witness death, go through its mourning rituals, and search for love, carnal and otherwise, in, it would seem, a hedge against oblivion.

Co-writer/director Russell Harbaugh, in a promising debut, navigates smoothly in rough affective waters, saving the best scenes by interspersing them among some fairly quotidian events that play naturally to the death motif. When alcoholic son, Chris (James Adomian), does a standup about the difficulty of Jesus competing with his Father, the metaphor is not lost but not heavy-handed either. Both sons are struggling to compete with dad and themselves.

Love After Love is a satisfying drama about all of us in families we know have dysfunctional working parts but who are on the greatest quest of all for love after love, after love, after love, forever.

This is one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. I have nothing good to say about it. In retrospect, I wonder if it was made to reboot Andie MacDowell's movie career. If so, it was a poor choice because the role and her acting in it were terrible. From beginning to weird end it was a major misfire. It does not deserve even one star.