This charming and sincere multi-generational story of love and marriage was directed by Ira Sachs, who was the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim fellowship for the development of the film, and co-wrote the witty and biting screenplay with Mauricio Zacharias, who was born in Rio de Janeiro and earned an MFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California, where he received the Warner Brothers' Scholarship.
Love is Strange depicts the delicate nature of any two people trying to build a long life together, and the possibility of love to grow deeper, and richer, with time. After 28 years together, Ben and George (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) take advantage of the new marriage laws and tie the knot in a garden wedding in the East Village.
Returning from their honeymoon, however, and on account of their publicised vows, George gets fired from his long-time job as a choir director for a co-ed Catholic school.
Suddenly, with no real savings to count on, the couple find that they can't afford the mortgage on their small Chelsea apartment and they have to sell and move out. Only days after they have gathered to celebrate their nuptials, this tight-knit community of family and friends now has to come together again to figure out how to help Ben and George.
"It examines the different ways each of us experience love - and what we expect from it - at different points in our lives," says Sachs.
"The heart of the story is the long-term relationship of Ben and George, two men who have built a life together for over 30 years, who get married in the first scene - and lose their home in the second. What does love look like to those who have been together for a lifetime, and are now in their later years?"
In the endearing story of the characters of Ben and George, love is given shape by loss, both material and personal, and how that loss can shine a bright light on all that these men had in their love for each other over so many years.
In the characters of Kate and Elliot, a married couple in their late-40s, played by Marisa Tomei and Darren Burrows, we see love in crisis, and how we often face ourselves in real and surprising ways in middle age. Their son is growing up, their stable lives interrupted by their uncle's unexpected presence; and everything that they knew to be fact seems much less certain.
And in their son, we find the nature of young love - of learning the realities of love through observing the relationships of others.
What makes this film rather exceptional is that Joey (played by an extraordinary young actor, Charlie Tahan) watches his parents, he watches Ben and George.
"They say you don't teach your children by what you say, but by what you do," says Sachs, and when Joey fully expresses how straight and gay love affect him deeply, it is a truly poignant moment that will break your heart.
"In many ways, Love Is Strange is a coming-of-age story, as it tracks the growing awareness of a teenage boy as he becomes a man - and what he learns from all the different relationships around him."
"Love Is Strange is about the ways we learn to live - how we are taught and who teaches us. How does the church teach us about love? How does a piano teacher teach us about music? How does an artist help us see? How do movies teach us who we are? And what love, strange and beautiful, can look like."
Make sure to share this remarkable feel-good film about love; it is bound to live in your heart long after leaving the cinema.
Read more about Love Is Strange and other new films now showing at www.writingstudio.co.za.
