In writer-director Ira Sachs’s 2014 charmer Love Is Strange, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play a long-term couple whose same-sex marriage causes one of them to lose their job, temporarily forcing them apart. It’s a sweet-natured affair that won the hearts of audiences and critics alike, with the American Association of Retired Persons delightfully citing it as the “best grownup love story” of the year.
There’s a similar bittersweetness at the heart of Sachs’s latest gay marriage story (co-written with regular collaborator Mauricio Zacharias), although this time it’s wedded to a rather more candid portrayal of physical and emotional intimacy. Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw are brilliantly believable as Tomas and Martin, a German film-maker and English graphic artist respectively, whose relationship has weathered extramarital affairs, about which they are avowedly open and honest.
