Immer noch Liebe! (2008)

Immer noch Liebe!: Directed by Nicholas Fackler. With Martin Landau, Ellen Burstyn, Elizabeth Banks, Adam Scott. A holiday fable that tells the story of an elderly man discovering love for the first time.

“I am both a Martin Landau and an Ellen Burstyn fan, so I was especially looking forward to seeing them act. I expected formidable acting muscle, sparks, confrontations: things befitting their Actoru0026#39;s Studio origins. What instead greeted me was a Landau so frail and docile…and frightened. His character, Robert Malone, is a man who treads warily and uneasily through life. He is a single man, and we assume he has simply been unlucky in love. Burstyn is the loving, open-hearted, yet lonely, woman who sweeps into his life one Christmas and changes it forever. One thing about Landau in this film: the actor looks shockingly aged, and Iu0026#39;m sure this has been deliberately used by both the filmmaker and Landau himself as a sort of effect to win us over to sympathy for Malone. Yet I had no doubt that this is a consummate performance. Landau, in life, is likely vital and engaged whereas Robert Malone, as I have said, seems on the brink of terror nearly every moment of his day. (The u0026quot;wakeupu0026quot; sequences are especially effective conveying this.) The love story plays out in an even-handed way. Underneath this blossoming love, of course, is the shadow of mortality. There occurs–over two-thirds into the film–a dramatic event that I wonu0026#39;t reveal or spoil, but it causes the viewer to look back over events that occurred and reflect on them…in a rewarding way. The drama is never cheap nor unjustified. I come away with satisfaction and admiration for the unexpected performances, for the tender core of the film, and for a fresh perspective on the elderly that is anything but cloying or cliché. This movie is in fact–particularly with the presence of Death hanging over events (as another character in the film)–as gripping and occasionally breathless as any thriller.”