Love After Love

With its soft-edged 16mm cinematography and spare piano score, Russell Harbaugh's directorial debut looks like (and feels like) a low-budget studio film from the 1970s. Love After Love serves up an elliptical tale about an upstate New York family grappling with love and loss. Suzanne (Andie MacDowell) works in a college theater department, while her son, Nicholas (Chris O'Dowd), is employed at a publishing house. Nicholas is in a rocky relationship with his co-worker, Rebecca (Juliet Rylance), while Suzanne is caring for a husband dying from an undisclosed illness (possibly ALS). Nick’s brother, Chris (James Adomian), a standup comedian with a drinking problem, describes his sibling as "the good one," but they all have their faults. Harbaugh eschews narrative transitions, which initially proves disorienting—for instance, he doesn't depict Nick’s breakup with Rebecca; shortly after his father's funeral, Nick simply shows up with Emilie (Dree Hemingway), a woman he was having an affair with. As Nick and Emelie make wedding plans, Suzanne attempts to move on. She works, redecorates, and readjusts to life as a single woman. Harbaugh has an adept touch with actors, but the film’s lack of humor eventually becomes a liability: this is a dour bunch of well-heeled folks. And it's not that their problems aren’t real, but that they waste an inordinate amount of time expressing disappointment in and disapproval of each other. Still, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. (K. Fennessy)