Checking out of the genderqueer bracket, American indie urban aesthete Ira Sachs' LITTLE MEN continues with his concern of Brooklyn's gentrification, in LOVE IS STRANGE (2014), a senior gay couple cannot afford their apartment and has to live separately, a temporary arrangement eventually plunges into a precipitate farewell, here, it centers around a nuclear family, Brian Jardine (Kinnear), a seasoned thespian struggling to pay the bills, his wife Kathy (Ehle), a full-time psychotherapist, and their 13-year-old son Jake (Taplitz), move into Brian's father's two-story building, inherited after the latter's death. They have a tenant, the Chilean immigrant Leonor Calvelli (García), a single mother who operates an artisanal dress shop in the ground floor, by dint of a very low monthly rent arranged between her and Brian's father for many years.
Brian and his sister Audrey (Balsam), both need money to support their families, revises a new lease demanding a treble amount of fee (still, considerably cheaper than the ballooning market price), which builds a tension between the two families, and what is also at cost is the newfound friendship between Jake and his coeval Tony (Barbieri), Leonor's son, when their quotidian proximity is discontinued.
More than anything, the two kid actors are phenomenal, both first-time actors, Theo Taplitz remarkably imbues an adorable appearance of sensitivity and androgyny to accentuate Jake's painter's disposition, not to mention his heart-rending plea in the climax. Whereas Michael Barbieri is totally on the opposite of the spectrum, with his convivial, animated verve and a naturalistic elocution that betrays his age, which is fit as glove as Tony's aspiring actor identity. Their friendship seems very organic, albeit their polarized make-ups, mercifully and perspicaciously Sachs doesn't make a heavy weather of Jake's budding affection towards Tony, which is tacitly suggested but as in reality, like as not, those little torch-carrying secret is mostly saved for its originator to savor and wallow, bless Sachs for not sensationalize a young boy's vulnerable,inchoate sexual awakening.
Grownups are also a cracking cluster, almost 20 years after his Oscar-nominated breakthrough in AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997), Greg Kinnear matures with an understated complexity that is given a full range here, he is a grieving son, a frustrating breadwinner , a glowing actor on stage, a devoted, grateful husband and a caring father, who is saddled with a daunting task to negotiate an unpleasant business deal with a tough-nut in the form of a magnificent Paulina García, nothing is above her Leonor to get what she intends, emotional manipulation, outright humiliation, tactical evasion, even if a child's innocent, heartfelt plea can do the trick, she has no qualms about leveraging it. García has so many strings to her bow, and each one adds a tangible layer to her character's humanity, warts and all,which is such an exceptional achievement that defiantly flouts the atrocious typecast of a downtrodden immigrant woman struggling in the land of freedom, here, she fervently digs in her heels and brazens it out in fighting a losing battle.
Sending out a well-meaning message of “letting go the past”, Sachs' LITTLE MEN is the whole package, a school of hard knocks for an adolescent, a critical looking into the miasma of gentrification and a hyperreal examination of ordinary beings' interrelations .
referential entries: Sachs' LOVE IS STRANGE (2014, 7.8/10), KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012, 6.8/10).
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