Love – Love
“Love – Love” follows two brothers in their late 30s. Adam (Haley Joel Osment) is schizophrenic, and when their grandmother dies he’s left without a caretaker. He refuses to move into a group home and wants to live with their estranged father, Bruce (Chris Elliott), a disgraced former pro tennis player hiding out near the Salton Sea. Adam talks his brother Jeff (Beck Bennett), an actor who is a little regressed and still searching for meaning, into going to find him. Jeff figures Adam will see for himself what a failure their father is, and then he can check Adam into the group home he has in his back pocket. It turns into a road trip.
The Salton Sea is not what most people would call a scenic part of the country. It can at times appear dirty and trashy, almost post-apocalyptic, but the film still manages to make it look beautiful throughout. Cinematographer Matheus Bastos gave it a feel that reminded me a bit of the desert scenes in “Breaking Bad”, but with a road trip vibe.
Osment, who most of us still picture from “The Sixth Sense,” is the reason to see this. He’s loudly brilliant as Adam. He portrays the frustration of living with a diagnosis without enough treatment, and he shows what it’s like for someone with a mental health condition to be the one looking after an aging grandmother. The performance isn’t restrained, and that’s why it works. Adam is believable, likeable, and hard to handle at exactly the right moments.
Chris Elliott was a surprise for me. He’s best known for comedy, from “There’s Something About Mary” to a long run of offbeat TV work, and he brings that same timing to Bruce, but in an uncharacteristic emotional performance. I came in expecting laughs, and they’re there, but I left feeling empathy for Bruce and understanding why he can’t connect with Adam.
Jeff looks like the lead at first, but the heart of the movie is the three of them together. Bennett, a “Saturday Night Live” alum who also turned up in “Brigsby Bear,” plays an actor who can’t stop crying in auditions, which is funny and earns some good laughs. Outside of that, he isn’t a standout. He’s not forgettable, but I wouldn’t call him memorable either. He lands somewhere in the middle, and this was enough for me to rescind half a star from the rating.
The other pieces that really drove the film for me were in the writing and direction. Fine examples of quality were littered throughout. Early in the trip, the brothers are stranded when their car breaks down, and Adam becomes convinced the red trucks showing up everywhere mean some agency is tracking him. What follows is a standoff in the middle of nowhere, and I won’t spoil how it ends. It’s one of the funniest moments in the film and still an emotional one. It showed us the brotherly connection that had been hidden behind mental illness and family frustration, and it works as a strong turning point. Later, there is a real emotional moment that showcases those difficulties, and succeeds in driving home why Bruce is the way he is, and maybe, just maybe, why Adam is too.
I also loved another well-judged moment involving an ironic karaoke performance in French. It only landed with about half of the audience, but it’s the kind of smart humor writer Bill Kennedy did well in “House of Cards” and “The Morning Show.” Kennedy, whose credits also include “Tell Me Lies,” gets the balance of drama and comedy right here. Geoffroy Berlioz’s score stays low and out of the way, which leaves the scenes to the actors and the empty landscape.
This is director Thomas Leisten Schneider’s feature debut, and it’s a great first step. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with more feature-length films.
“Love – Love” made its US premiere and festival debut at the 35th Heartland Film Festival. The film has no available theatrical release date of note, and a runtime of 97 minutes.
4.5 out of 5 stars.
