What if Romeo and Juliet had lived? Soon enough, at the ripe old age of fourteen, they would have been arguing about whose turn it was to take out the garbage.
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing is about Walter, a depressed American college student, and Lila, a middle-aged spinster who is old enough to be his mother, and their love for each other which is both impossible and possible for the same reason: she's on the verge of dying.
He tries to convince her that life is beautiful. He flings open the window and says, "You see? There's joy in the world." The sun shines into the small hotel room, but only a moment later, workers unload a black coffin from a hearse parked in the street directly below the window.
It's one of those little gems of a movie that makes you want to say, "Holy shit, that was a great little movie - why haven't I heard of it before?" You have now! And unlike me, an avowed Maggie Smith fan who bought it on ebay, you can watch it all on YouTube for free. As they say in bad restaurants, "Enjoy!"
