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Gabriel & Danielle in LOVE ETC. (Photo: Paladin)

LOVE ETC.
Directed by Jill Andresevic
Produced by Andresevic, Jeffrey Stewart & Chiemi Karasawa
Released by Paladin
USA. 94 min. Not Rated
 

Love Etc. charmingly demonstrates that in the real world love is more than a four-letter word for romance. Debut director Jill Andresevic showcases the diversity of New York City relationships through five non-fiction lifestyles, using the multiple arcs structure of romantic comedies, like Richard Curtis’s Love Actually (2003), while extending beyond the neighborhoods seen in New York, I Love You (2009).

In what is also a love letter to life in New York City (each location is colorfully mapped), Andresevic sought out a personable range by age, ethnicity, and aspirations to put a distinctively Big Apple spin on universal types. “First Love” centers on a Gossip Girl-like private high school couple, the pretty, hair-tossing Upper East Side Danielle and the downtown immigrant Gabriel. (He’s a gorgeous boy from Brazil whose stepdad has a Soho loft). As the youngest couple, they are the most self-aware in front of the camera, but the starry eyes and uncertainties of adolescent infatuation still come through.

Post-graduate couple Chitra and Mahendra (“Getting Married”) are planning their Bollywood by way of Jamaica Hills, Queens wedding with their neighboring families amidst the strains of the recession. The life of gay theater director Scott (“Single”) looks like a fantasy flash-forward of a Glee kid when he’s seen working with the likes of actors Justin Kirk and Julie White. (Debra Monk performs a special John Kander song at the shower for his baby by a surrogate mother.) In “Starting Over,” divorced construction worker Ethan has a predilection for bar-hopping away from his Forest Hills, Queens apartment, though that’s balanced by his full-time custody of two eye-rolling teenagers. “Lasting Love” seems straight out of (Queens-born) Paul Simon’s “Old Friends” lyrics—“How terribly strange to be seventy”—a comparison that amateur songwriters Albert (age 79) and Marion (age 89) of Canarsie, Brooklyn would appreciate in their 49th year of marriage, with failing health and unfailing devotion.

Unlike reality TV’s simplified snapshots, Andresevic follows these New Yorkers closely through the shoals of their daily relationships over four seasons, and combines vérité style with thoughtful getting-to-know-them conversations. Through this longitudinal approach, more depth is revealed beneath the Ivy League ambition of the high school senior, the nagging of the Indian-American Princess, the theatrical nervousness of the single father-to-be, the braggadocio of the lonely dad dating his son’s friend’s mother, and the caregiver gently dealing with a loved one’s creeping dementia. Even as the viewer can’t help but root for each against the obvious odds, the documentary avoids cloying clichés through the bittersweet lessons each learns. “I love you” can be richer, more nuanced, and more expansive than Hollywood fairy tales. Nora Lee Mandel
June 1, 2011

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