Love After Love

It's a film intentionally adrift, rambling between a loose succession of family gatherings and dinner parties with subdued style, the camera feeling like just another person at the edge of the room.

An unflinching portrait of how grief can unravel a tightknit family in ways both banal and heart-wrenching.

Challenging, unflinching and deeply honest.

First-time director Russell Harbaugh presents grief as it is, in all its pain and ugliness, rather than using the convenient, uplifting short-hand that Hollywood prefers.

I found it a great masochistic experience.

This first-time feature from writer/director Russell Harbaugh has an understated, intimate, pointillist style, with a cool jazz score that matches its improvisational tone.

I wish the pieces of Harbaugh's domestic jigsaw fit more elegantly together. Sometimes, it seems as if he's tripping into scenes the way a person might stumble into a darkened room before turning on the light.

The film is a bit messy at times, but considering the circumstances on screen, that seems appropriate.

The story of Love After Love is one of grieving, and it's about that process in a specific, particularly sad sort of way.

Maybe the most damaging factor is that [director Russ] Harbaugh does nothing to establish that the paterfamilias, first seen in reasonably good health at a family gathering, is such an emotional touchstone to his wife and sons.

Yet this movie, for all its laudable aspects, left me wanting for more, a personally frustrating turn of events to say the least.

Andie MacDowell [displays] one of the best performances of her career.