Images courtesy of Quiver Distribution
A LOVE LIKE THIS— 3 STARS
LESSON #1: SETTING UP YOUR IDEAL ROMANTIC GETAWAY— If someone were given a sizable bankroll to plan out a romantic weekend getaway, a beachside vacation rental in Malibu ought to do the trick. That’s what Paul, played by Hayes MacArthur, typically a comedy actor, is banking on in A Love Like This. He’s the first to arrive at this lavish home, lugging in his garment bag, suitcase, and a pair of grocery bags, while Howard Jones’s 1985 hit “Things Can Only Get Better” provides the introductory tune. Paul has time to sweeten up the kitchen with a vase of flowers, shower, shave, mix a drink, plot his surprise, and tap his leg with impatience after declaring in the mirror, “This is going to be the best weekend of your life.”
This is clearly a guy going all out to create something perfect, and that nervous leg bounce means his expectations are high. His hotly anticipated pairing for A Love Like This arrives in the form of eternal hottie Emanuelle Chriqui’s Leah. He greets her with a birthday cake when it’s not her birthday. After one seductive shared lick of frosting from that off-occasion dessert after she barely walks in the door, the Howard Jones needle drop returns and, bang, it’s on.
Paul and Leah’s first post-coital pillow talk brings forth a sweet gift from him of their unearthed old mix tape. A night swim brings forth more declarations of affection and sexual goals, sealed with a handsy huzzah of “Let’s never forget this weekend.” At this point in A Love Like This, we’re hooked and impressed by what’s shaping up to be a very spirited and steamy weekend for an attractive and nostalgic middle-aged couple. They come across as absolutely charming high school sweethearts we’re willing to root for.
LESSON #2: LET THE LIES BEGIN— All of that warmth between Leah and Paul is undone at the 13-minute mark of A Love Like This with a fateful swerve of intrigue. After inquiring about the late hour, the two head to separate rooms to make phone calls. These are fake check-ins to spouses and kids at home from two people who are supposed to be on business trips. Her call to an unseen daughter under the weather is sweet. His conversation with his wife, full of irksome questions, is curt. Let the lies begin.
There’s a mood shift in our two leads, and another one in us watching A Love Like This as viewers. Paul and Leah are indeed old flames who have kept a secret affair for years, and have mutually agreed that this weekend in Malibu has to be their last tryst. And yet, we can almost predict, right then and there with that revealed stake of finality, that one of them will ask for a permanence that cannot be granted without wrecking a pair of homes? Can Leah and Paul turn this decades-long passion off when their time is up?
The script from Jeffrey Ruggles (Hard Promises) expands from A Love Like This’s opening reel into the grand weekend, where two later fortysomethings are chasing their first and strongest love. In between more phone calls made back to reality, they dote on each other, dress up for dates, undress after them, and continue the bedroom frolic. Director John Asher (A Boy Called Po) and his regular music video cinematographer Graham Futerfas (Mind of Its Own) beautifully slow the narrative down to soak up every sunbeam provided by the California coast to heat up and beautify this couple. The whimsical treatment is on full blast, and it’s admittedly very alluring.
LESSON #3: CAN WE, IN GOOD CONSCIENCE, ROOT FOR INFIDELITY?—Yet, given the hidden truth, do we continue to root for these two cheaters in A Love Like This? The lovely glow of the movie is a test of prudence and decency. There are likely different limits and lengths folks are willing to watch and feign with the same enamored feelings and competing sins of selfishness. As much as the couple needs convincing to fall back in love, the audience will need reasons, too.
While Asher stays on MacArthur and Chriqui virtually the entire length of the film and doesn’t reveal much about the escaped home lives of their characters, more than voices on the other side of a cell phone, there’s a missing measure of heft. Paul and Leigh know each other enough to share and challenge their intimate intentions and promised boundaries, but A Love Like This does not dig very deep into origins and motives. Knowing, respectively, what it takes him or her to enter this adulterous situation would go a long way toward justifying the lengths of genuineness given this attempted romance.
Without that type of dramatic weight that pushes harder than a liar’s loose regret, the most performance range we get out of Emanuelle Chriqui and Hayes MacArthur is a minor shift and transformation towards a balanced plane of apology when disagreements create a verbal blow-up. The pain registers differently between the two as the reservation clock is running out. This second act tailspin and semi-pathetic nosedive into fast food and extra booze feels fairly weak and kills the vibe (as it sort of should), but happens early enough in the movie that it can’t be the hard end. The eventual atonement forces the issue of how to settle the whole scope of A Love Like This, which goes back to how much both they—and we—are willing to condone and continue.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1383)
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