The other night, Suni and I watched a movie that neither of us had heard about called Love, Ludlow. It was between that and a few other things Tivo had decided we might like, and based on the description, we decided to give it a shot:
Myra Smuldanski has done the unthinkable. After years of shunning men she accepts a date with Reginald Baron, an account executive at the office where she temps. The only man in her life up to this point has been Ludlow, Myra’s bi-polar younger brother who aspires to be the next Jackson Pollack. Lud is not to happy with the new man in Myra’s life and tries his best to destroy any budding relationship between her and Reg. Myra finds herself torn between her role as her brothers caretaker and the possibility of finding someone who wants to take care of her.
Actually, that’s the “plot synopsis” from amazon. The actual Tivo blurb was much more telegraphic, cramming the same basic idea into one sentence.
Love, Ludlow is a great movie that is, at first glance, little more than a quirky, funny romantic comedy. There’s nothing mindshakingly original about the premise of boy meets girl, but Reggie’s awkward courtship of Myra is so over-the-top that it’s quite fresh. Cinematic romance usually has a fairly predictable arc, but I never felt like I knew what was coming next with this movie.
Myra’s character, I think, really anchored the film, and it was because of the strong performance by Alicia Goranson. Myra is an almost impossibly caustic office temp, and I think that a lesser actress might have me wondering how someone with such a firey disposition could work in a field that requires a modicum of working well with others. But Goranson plays Myra with such authority that it just seems natural,
Similarly, the shy, awkward Reggie (David Eigenberg) might have been played as a shallow caricature of a socially-inept dweeb, but Eigenberg creditably shows him to be an earnest, caring, somewhat confused guy trying his best to win what might be the girl of his dreams.
The movie starts with Reggie being smitten with Myra, and Myra’s gradual opening to the possibility of dating him. Myra’s brother Ludlow is the big complication. He seems to spend most of his time in he and Myra’s tiny apartment writing elaborate fairwell notes and fingerpainting.
According to the movie’s description, Ludlow is bipolar. I’m no diagonstician, but he seemed a bit more autistic to me–his moods seemed fairly even, but he had definite problems interfacing with the rest of the world and accepting a break in his routine. I thought that the uncertainty about Ludlow’s precise problem strengthened the movie–it makes sense that, given the family’s situation, they aren’t going to be taking him for a battery of psychiatric exams, and they probably wouldn’t have a real diagnosis. Myra would just know, as she knows in the movie, that there is something wrong with her brother, and that it is her job to take care of him.
And this is the heart of the movie. We see that Myra, with her abraisive exterior, is hiding a terrible secret–that she really is a loving, caring, and dedicated person. She hasn’t dated much not because she can’t stand other people, but because she knows that no one will accept both her and Ludlow.
There’s another piece of good ambiguity in Myra and Ludlow’s mother. In the movie’s narrative, she died five years earlier, leaving Myra to care for Lud. But a few comments raise the possibility that she committed suicide. It’s not hard to imagine that their mother, unable to cope with Ludlow’s demands, simply had too much. It only makes Myra’s burden in caring for her brother that much heavier–knowing that her own mother couldn’t handle it, how does Myra keep going? The apartment’s cramped confines really communicate the claustrophobia that Myra must be feeling, trapped by her obligations to her brother, but unable to abandon him.
This is a totally “New York” movie–it seems like the sort of thing that Woody Allen might be doing if he were making his first film now. It perfectly captures the energy–and the conceits–of the city. For example, Reggie mentions that, for him, back home is “the Midwest.” Only a New Yorker would blur everything west of the Hudson in such a way that a character not from the tri-state region would be so vague about their home. That’s hardly a criticism–I think it’s just another thing that makes the movie ring so true.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this movie since I’ve seen it, and I think it really is very profound. To me, Ludlow represents the baggage that people bring to any relationship. It could be, as it is in this movie, a sibling or parent that one has to care for. It could be a sheltered past, an abusive childhood, a bad set of friends, or just the legacy of unfortunate choices made years ago. It could be memories–it could be anxieties about the future. Whatever it is, it prevents us from letting other people into our lives. It’s probably true that everyone has their Ludlow, and there’s a moment in every relationship when we introduce the other person to our Ludlow and hope for the best.
So Love, Ludlow is really more than just a romantic comedy about an unlikely couple. On a deeper level, it’s really about something that anyone can identify with–revealing part of yourself, and your life, to someone you want to care deeply about. Like the best art, it takes something small and local–in this case, a budding relationship between a New York temp and account executive–and makes it resonate in a way that is truly universal.
I recommend it highly for anyone in a relationship–I can see that it would be a fun date movie (and a real ice-breaker for a first date) but also something that longtime couples can get something out of.