All this week, we at mxdwn Movies have been reporting on films premiering at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and this odd habit they have of getting acquired by movie studios for distribution rights. Only this time…actually, this time’s no different, another low-budget film got picked up – though surprisingly not by A24 Films. The Hollywood Reporter, uh, reports that director/writer Ira Sachs’s (Forty Shades of Blue, Married Life, The Delta) Love is Strange has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. The film is about a middle-aged couple faced with the possibility of losing their apartment in New York. Not very compelling you say? The two men in the couple are played by John Lithgow and Alfred Molina.
Sachs has some experience with Sundance and films about gay relationships. His 2012 directorial effort, Keep the Lights On – which he co-wrote with Mauricio Zacharias – told the story of a relationship between two men: one a filmmaker, the other a closeted lawyer. It premiered at that year’s Sundance Film Festival and was pretty well received – by which we mean 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Beside Molina and Lithgow, the film also features Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, Charlie Tahan, and Cheyenne Jackson. Sachs re-teams with Zacharias for the screenplay.
Here’s a plot summary from Sundance’s site:
After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot in an idyllic wedding ceremony in lower Manhattan. But when news of their marriage reaches the Catholic school where George works, he is fired from his longtime job, and the couple can no longer afford their New York City apartment. As a temporary solution, George moves in with the two gay cops next door, while Ben moves to Brooklyn to live with his nephew, Eliot; Eliot’s wife, Kate; and their teenage son. As Ben and George struggle to secure a new apartment, the pain of living apart and their presence in two foreign households test the resilience and relationships of all involved.
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