Title: Love, Etc.

Opens: July 1, 2011

Jill Andresevic is in love with New York, both the city’s physical attributes and the demographics. Her photographer, Luke Geissbuhler, trains his camera on a variety of neighborhoods including Soho, Forest Hills, Jamaica Hills, Coney Island, Canarsie, Midtown Manhattan and Broadway He implicitly shows that these various sections are inhabited by a wide range of people, living—as WNYC used to say—in peace and harmony and enjoying the benefits of democracy. Andresevic knows how to avoid the bane of documentaries that make the genre the least popular among regular moviegoers. Instead of launching a round robin of talking heads facing one another and sharing philosophies to shaky, hand-held cameras, she unfolds the work as though it were a work of fiction, helped by Alex Israel’s editing which switches us from one couple to another and back again—though unlike fictional dramas, the people in the cast do not meet one another toward the conclusion but remain separate entities with distinct problems of their own.

This is not a Hallmark Hall of Fame type of presentation. The folks in “Love, Etc.” who demonstrate their attraction, do not all wind up happily ever after, living like youthful and beautiful princes and princesses. In fact even the happiest of the couples, the two who have been married for 48 years (she 89, he 79) has to cope with the woman’s progressing dementia which prevents her at times from even recognizing her husband.

The long-lasting marriage of Albert and Marion takes center stage. He is s songwriter who plays simple tunes on the piano and gives occasional lessons, but he has apparently no success on or off-Broadway. “They don’t want the songs like they used to,” he mourns, thinking highly of sentimental works of Cole Porter and implicity criticizing the cynicism that’s de rigeuer in musical theater today. He did, however, catch the public eye with a song celebrating Brooklyn. A rendition of the song by a soloist outdoors with Brooklyn Borough President Mary Markowitz presiding draws applause, but the enterprise looks pretty banal in my view. He cuts up the food for his wife Marion, who appears to have no teeth, a deficiency that contrasts with her husband’s use of oversized, round glasses, giving him a passing resemblance to Woody Allen.

Ethan, a forty-one year old divorced man whose ex-wife granted him full custody of two handsome young boys, is the most vigorous person on display. He admits that he smokes and drinks too much, perhaps because of his anxiety: despite his good looks and articulate presence, he has met few women with whom he clicked, having enjoyed the company of one Argentinian-American woman who is not identified. She apparently flew the coop by movie’s end.

Chitra, a 28-year-old paralegal and Mahendra, a lawyer who has passed the bar but cannot find a job, are from Jamaica Hills in Queens. Someone in her ethnic Indian family has money because they had a wedding with 350 guests, elaborate costumes, hired musicians, the works. Alas: why spend so much on nuptials when 50% of such celebrations will end in divorce? The two cannot get their act together, they separated, and now they’re together trying to make a go, but he appears unwilling to wash dishes and do laundry. He refuses to be at what he considers the beck-and-call of his bride. Things will go downhill, methinks.

Scott, a gay fifty-two years old who looks a decade younger in his baseball cap and informal demeanor, is a successful theater director who in one scene got the actress Debra Monk to join in an original song about his plight. Unusual for someone who does not have a lot of time on his hands, he chose fatherhood by using a surrogate—who delivered twins for the lad. He seems to have found a guy, but who knows? And how will he have time to give to his pair of infant twins?

Gabriel, an 18-year-old émigré from Brazil now fluent in English, is enjoying his first love, Danielle, same age. But Danielle is about to go to Dartmouth, and we know how such a separation at their age can lead to a final split. Ultimately they remain “friends,” or so the epilogue states.

Andresevic must have presided over a few hundred hours of filming, taken over the course of a year, because the couples act natural, even publicly playing out their arguments—particularly the South Asian folks who, according to him, got married because she pressured him to do so even though he had not found work. She resents that she is the one who “brings home the bacon” and therefore, in his mind, claims more authority over the household than he.

“Love, Etc.” is endearing because of its naturalness, its seeming use of a camera more sophisticated than a hand-held unit, and its feeling of optimism. As God says in Genesis 2:18 says, it is not right for a man to be alone. Jill Andresevic has no problem with that.

Unrated. 94 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Story: B+

Overall: B+