Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review – a portrait of love and resilience

The opening shot of Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s debut feature immediately announces Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other as a film of thoughtful composition. Bathed in warm light, the 84 year old photographer Joel Meyerowitz occupies the foreground, perched on the stairs of his rustic Tuscan home, his head leaning against the bannister, while further in the distance, on the home’s ground floor, we can see (and hear) Maggie Barrett playing a pensive melody on the piano. Over the following 90-odd minutes, the directorial duo, a young couple themselves, fix their gaze with admiration on a couple in their later years as they tenderly ruminate, with unfettered openness, on loving and aging, on endurance and permanence.

Beyond a short, artful montage in which Maggie and Joel narrate key details about their lives, this is a picture that’s thoroughly preoccupied with the present; a portrait of a 35 year old relationship in the now, especially against the challenges the two must face when an accident leaves Maggie bedridden with a broken femur. Despite being nearly a decade younger than her husband, it’s Joel that has to resort to pragmatism as he selflessly waits on Maggie hand and foot alongside a busy schedule of exhibition openings, book signings and public talks.

As Maggie recovers, first in their beautiful Tuscan home, and then at Joel’s swanky Manhattan apartment, something else is noticeably chipping away at her. In fairness, as a self-published writer and visual artist in her mid-seventies who by now, is all too used to rejection, it must be tough to be living in the shadow of a husband who’s not only much more accomplished, but one of the most highly regarded artists of his generation. His peaks have often coincided with her troughs, and Maggie’s frustrations over unbalanced power dynamics slowly put the relationship under pressure.

The film’s opening image, then, gains another dimension of meaning, echoing the divide between its two subjects: a confident photography giant, a man of striking physicality and a gentle, calm demeanour in the foreground, and behind him a woman desperate to be seen for her own distinct sensibilities, who has had to struggle for the things that came to her husband ever so easily. With the camera mostly confined to the interiors of their two homes, we gain access to many tender and intimate moments, like sharing a bath in candlelight, yet the film’s more emotionally charged moments are saturated with an air of self-importance that borders on irritating performance, with outbreaks that are difficult to empathise with, let alone relate to.

Lacking the sort of attentive intuition that characterises Meyerowitz’s photography, the film’s hyper-composed, stylised mode ends up establishing an alienating gulf of distance between us and the titular “strangers”, whose socioeconomic power is far from universal. Still, the impact of the long, unedited takes making up the film’s last few moments attest to a real sense of honesty and candour, leaning into complex questions that lack straightforward solutions.