Living Out Loud

A mid-life crisis, a love story, some drugs, some death, a little jazz, and some of those occasional voices you hear in your head.  Pleasantly confused?  Me too.  

Living Out Loud is a story about Judith (Holly Hunter), a woman just separated from her husband of 15 years, and Pat (Danny DeVito), an elevator operator whose wife threw him out because of his gambling addiction and debts owed because of it.  With all of the cliché components of a love story, but with other unexpected elements, and no clear beginning, middle, or end Living Out Loud gives a respectable version of the romantic comedy.

The film begins with Judith (Hunter) breaking up with her husband after she finds out that he has been cheating one her.  Her fabulous fifth avenue doctor’s wife life becomes so clearly phony when she realizes that she had given up her ambitions to support his; and smashed in her face when she sees his mistress very much pregnant, after many conversations of him convincing her that they didn’t need children to live a happy and fulfilling life.

We soon meet Pat (DeVito), a loveable short pudgy elevator operator with debts up to his ears, a gambling problem, and a wife that left him for it.  With repetitive opportunities to be relieved from debt, from a job offer from his brother, he decides to stick to his unfortunate independence.

At the meeting of Judith and Pat, parallels begin to manifest in their completely opposite lives.  Judith, the supporter of a successful man and Pat, the stubbornly independent one; now both without a family or motivation for much of anything.  With a hug of empathy, a small sympathetic loan, and a bottle of wine, the stage is set for the underdog love story.  And while there is all the opportunity to exercise that avenue – and even though a part of you wishes that writer and director, Richard LaGravenese, had indeed exercised it – the realism sticks and the need for one another is what keeps them together.

Giving an equally exceptional performance to Hunter and Devito, Queen Latifah, playing Liz Bailey, a jazz singer that Judith sometimes falls paralyzed to, cannot go unnoticed.  Liz (Latifah) becomes a friend of Judith and Pat and shares in their relationship horrors when she is so bluntly informed by Judith that her boyfriend is a homosexual.

Living Out Loud gives us a seemingly small peek at the lives of these three individuals and how people that are so different in so many ways can share life experiences that are so relatable.  With no clear ending, or beginning for that matter, the characters are not only formed based on their life experiences, but are completely relative to yours.  You decide their beginning and their end, giving you a sense of self-empowerment (which is pretty impressive to do in 100 minutes, kudos LaGravenese), just the same way as Judith, Pat, and Liz do.