Love is Not Love was an impulse decision on “sexy movie night” theme of the CineJoy Film Festival. There are a lot of things about this movie that are going to make most people roll their eyes deep into their heads: the old man, who–inexplicably–plays the protagonist of the second and third acts, smarmily grins at his mistress and delivers lines filled with so much cringe you’ll want to step out of your skin and give it a nice deep clean, like, “I am leaving with so much more than I arrived with.” The movie reaches for an avant-garde feel which is going to turn off most people: the thing is shot in black and white; the first and last scenes of the movie are extended walk and talk scenes, modeled very intentionally after Rosecrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, with the stilted, pseudo-philosophical language; Irish accents (transplanted to New York City); and a lot of weird meditations about love and women placed into the mouths of “modern men” by a female director that feels a little bit like a strawman and a little bit dated.
Once you get past the literal performances of Hamlet, the magical realist arguments done as court room scenes between bickering married people, and the Commedia dell’arte acts in Central Park, there are some truly cool moments, or maybe one truly nice moment in the film, where the protagonist and his wife talk over a nightmare that’s driving him to take Ambien before a business trip. The two of them describe it in terms of the way it would be shot if various directors had their hands on it.
The movie feels like a play in the way it’s blocked and the stilted, high-brow dialogue, but not necessarily a play you’d seek out, more a community play that you’re seeing because your professor said he would give you extra credit if you came and saw him in it.
