Keep the Lights On

Ira Sachs is one of the greatest directors working today - it's hard to believe that the reviewers here who have given the movie low marks don't have a personal axe to grind - it's either that or simply bad taste - his movies are always slices of real life - go watch Die Hard for the 100th time if this isn't your thing. Real life IS action.

This was the second movie directed by Ira Sachs I tried to watch. From now on, his name will symbolize that his movies aren’t worth bothering with. His attempt to portray his leading actors as living a life like anyone else failed. They’re terrible actors. They were so unconvincing. I couldn’t finish watching the movie. What a waste of my money, but it won’t happen again because Ira Sachs is bad news, no matter how hard he tries.

This is a great little film based on the ill-fated, real life love story of Ira Sachs and his former partner. This is not a movie for those with the all-too-common attention span of maggots who would be better served by watching "Eating Out 13." There is little in the way of the titular, gratuitous sex, nudity, and manufactured drama that pervades American cinema in general, but which has long-since passed cliché, effectively stifling almost all creativity and storytelling in American gay cinema. Rather, the sex, nudity and drama is incidental to the story and burns at a slow pace, punctuated by fits and starts until the fabric of the relationship is torn to shreds-past the point of repair. Like it happens in real life; not the "life" manufactured by movie studios looking to sell box-office tickets.

On honest look at life, relationships. Agree with the last review. A Classic!

Brutal but beautiful. Really loved it because of the honesty everyone brought to the piece.

I've dealt with a lot of addicts and there was little of the anger, drama, scenes, lies, damage, excuses, etc that are a part of all that. In fact if you read the other side's version -- Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man -- you wouldn't believe it was the same story. Sach's gives a much more muted and sanitized version with only hints of the chaos that must have been going on. For me, it was all a little too flat.

Cliché movie. Just cause it's with gay characters half the scenes are in the bedroom- is this the only way to show love? No character development. Tries too hard to be 'arty', 'indie', or whatnot but instead it's simply painfully slow.

Note: a semi-spoiler alert exists near the end of this review. I so much wanted to like this movie, but the bad writing makes it impossible to care much for the poorly drawn characters. The plot summary says Paul is a closeted lawyer. Really? Closeted to whom? You never see it. After just a few minutes of screen time together, Erik tells his friend how "very nice" Paul is. Really? I saw no evidence of that. Disjointed scenes make no narrative sense; supporting characters drift in and out with little relevance to the story or even understanding of who they are; and the late, sudden "ultimatum" out of nowhere with the characters suddenly reversing their desires after 90 minutes of displaying the opposite sentiments was unbelievable and incomprehensible. This movie needed depth to work instead of skit-like, superficial scenes one after the other. What a shame.

Good news: A love story with gay characters that isn't so much a "gay movie". Those are usually terrible. Bad news: boring movie, no character development. Neither of these guys are particularly likable. For drama to work, you have to care about them or hate them or something, but there was just nothing. Plus, you're just not going to look that good being addicted to meth for several years. They should have hired a make up person, or looked up how meth addicts actually look. I've probably thought about this review longer than the writers of the movie thought about what they were doing.

Great film, provocative and powerful. The cast is amazing.