Love After Love (2018)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Pretty Good

A Masterpiece!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

For whatever reason, I started this film thinking it was about a woman finding love and companionship later in life. I usually like those kinds of films because they are something different from the usual fare of 20-somethings romance movies. It wasn't too long ago I saw Debra Winger's comeback film entitled "The Lovers," so that's probably why I had this assumption. However, the movie is actually a very bleak family drama about death. It shows how an upper middle-class social circle handles life in the aftermath and ambiance of death and dying. It made me cringe a little bit to see how the adult sons react to everything, but I suppose that really is how young people respond when they confront the realities of life for the first time. In summary, they react very poorly and with indignation, as if life owes them something and they expected better. I am actually younger than these characters, but I have encountered disease and death so much in my life already that all of this is far too familiar to me. I would say this film is not an unrealistic portrayal of this subject matter. The central message is that, despite death, people go on living as normal. The human drama never stops. Life is for the living and there's not much time to waste out of our finite lives to grieve. People chase endlessly after love and romance despite the futility of it all. Honestly, this is why I refuse to have children. I dislike life and by not reproducing it's like my way of having revenge against it. I would not want my children to face these horrible things like aging, death, disease, loss, and heartbreak. Other people think breeding is a great idea, though. It does make good fodder for screenplays and art films.The movie is a little pretentious, but I appreciate the non-linear editing and the fact that it makes you think a bit and face a truth that most people like to hide from. It also helps that Andie MacDowell is very beautiful and it was nice to see her again. She was easily the best part of this movie. There is another film that deals with the same subject matter in a less depressing and more comedic way named "The Savages" (2007) if you're interested.

As many reviewers have noted , this movie jumps from one time sequence to another and leaves it up to the viewer to basically figure it out. I'm not a big fan of this style of first time director Russell Harbaugh, and with the film's many flawed and unlikable characters, I'm surprised I'm not giving this a 1 or a 2 rating as well.However, I did find some strong acting here led by the seemingly ageless Andie MacDowell, and some dramatic tension among this dysfunctional family which I found interesting enough to stay with the movie, although part of me wanted to indeed bail. Overall, a mixed bag for me here, but I can see how many will be turned off by some of the unlikable characters and their crappy actions.

I hated this film. It was confusing, jumping around chronologically, didn't explain what happened in between scenes, unredeeming characters, and confusing roles. So disappointed.

We had hopes for this film, but it seems that it was all over the place. While we're fans of Andie MacDowell and some of the other cast members, the writing and directing was so poor that it brought down the actors, through no fault of their own. Of eight of us, nobody could relate to any of the characters. The writing seemed all over the place. We're not exactly sure what the real issues were - if there was just one major problem that pulled everything down, or if everything was off in and of itself - but either way it was a waste of time and money. There are some pretty good movies around. This was no one of them.