A review by
Roger Ebert
Another Sundance treasure: Adrienne Weiss's "Love, Ludlow," a bittersweet romantic comedy about an abrasive office worker named Myra (Alicia Goranson), who keeps guys at a distance but is worn down by the determination of her shy co-worker, Reggie (David Eigenberg). He's a loner who thinks he may have finally found someone he could get along with. Tentatively, awkwardly, they start to see each other, but the elephant in the room is her brother Ludlow (Brendan Sexton III), a spoiled, lazy, socially inept agoraphobic who sees Reggie as a threat.
The screenplay by David Paterson makes these characters into distinctive originals, eccentrics right on the edge of being impossible. "I heard it takes more muscles to frown than to smile," Reggie tells Myra. "That's how I work out," she says.
Synopsis of the Film
With a gleeful wink to a more innocent cinematic era and classic 1950s romantic comedies, Love, Ludlow invites us into a crisply constructed, smartly stylized universe that exists almost outside of time, filled with delightful anachronisms like typewriters, hair rollers, "gentlemen callers," and characters who say things like "he's a card."
Within this constantly surprising and charming world lives Myra--a tough, straight-talking temp from Queens, played by the lovable, husky-voiced character actress, Alicia Goranson. At the office Myra takes no guff; but at home life is dominated by her eccentric, unstable younger brother, Ludlow, who occupies a fantasy world inside their tiny flat and depends on her for his every need. When Reggie, a sweetly nebbishy "suit" from work takes a shine to her, Myra slowly lets down her guard and cautiously attempts to carve out a life of her own. But a deeply threatened Ludlow throws up serious roadblocks, and she must tread a thorny path if she is to salvage happiness.
A seasoned theatre director making her film debut, Adrienne Weiss sticks close to the raw emotional truth of all three characters, and we fall in love with them because their behavior is always unpredictable. With her deeply humanistic sensibility, her flair for ironic humor, and her ability to creatively mine cultural references and retro styles, Weiss is unequivocally someone to watch.