Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other

When Maggie met Joel, he was already two marriages deep, and she was exiting #4. Thirty years later they are still together, despite the decade between them (he’s 84, she’s 75). It’s clear there is a genuine and abiding love there. But that’s not to say there aren’t tensions. Joel (Meyerowitz) is a world-famous photographer, feted at the best galleries, a man of multiple books and acolytes everywhere he turns. Maggie is also an artist, a self-published writer, a pianist, a painter… But famous she is not. And now as their time is coming nearer, she cannot quite escape the dread of a life unappreciated, unfulfilled, overlooked, maybe, even by her adoring Joel.

This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team (co-directors Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter) is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of a man and a woman, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.

Excellent… Between the four of them, directors and subjects build up a portrait of the grace notes and grind of married life, a varied rhythm as quick as a game of ping-pong (Joel and Maggie are avid players) and slow as the sun traversing an empty apartment.

Leslie Felperin, The Guardian

A thoughtful, revealing and sometimes profoundly uncomfortable viewing experience — at times, it’s like eavesdropping on an unusually tetchy marriage counselling session. At others, the connection between these two fascinating people and the insights into their eventful, fully-lived lives is unexpectedly moving.

Wendy Ide, Screen International