The REEL Addict 

There are times when while watching a movie in my room, my roommate passes my door, stops, looks at me for a few moments, then with a sigh says “You’re watching something cute and romantic, aren’t you?” You see, as a big romantic sap, I have an obvious tell: I have a big goofy grin plastered all over my face. If anyone had turned to look at me during the screening of LOVELY, STILL, they would have seen a lot of that grin.

It was hard not too, given how wonderful twenty-three year old writer-director Nicholas Fackler’s confidently made debut film was. There is something so sweet in this story of a lonely old man named Robert (greatly performed by Martin Landau) who unexpectedly and joyfully finds love again with his new neighbor, Mary (Ellen Burstyn) – and is completely overwhelmed by it (in the nervous and emotionally consuming way). And even though it seems a story about love the second time around (to borrow from Sinatra), it really proves to be a lovely ode to the joys of dating at any age, and the intoxicating effects of all consuming – and nearly instant – true love. If you recognize a teenage romance or two of your own in the film, it’s probably not by mistake.

There are slight hints throughout the film that something is slightly off, both with Robert and Mary, and by the time it’s revealed what that is the film takes a slight turn in another direction. It’s one that seems like it should detract from everything has come before, but in the end it proves to enrich its romantic theme of the power and force of true love. It makes one of the sweetest movie to come along this year, that much more memorable.