Love Life

There is always going to be a sticky end when a wife gives
permission to her handsome husband to play the field, as long as he came
home at night.

Odds are that he’ll fall in love elsewhere, bring back the odd STD
and she might well find the odd distraction of her own. None of the
above dliemmas happen here in Reinout Oerlemans’ Love Life. Instead, the perfectly agreed marriage comes into turmoil when the missus Carmen (van Houten) ends up with breast cancer and our man, Stijn (Atsma),
is faced with giving up his wayward life and doing the honorable thing;
attending countless chemothrapy sessions, mopping up the subsequent
vomit and the odd wig shopping sessions for the balding spouse.

Well, at least he gives it a go. That is, until one fiesty lady, Roos (Anna Drijver),
gets her claws into and is not prepared to let him go. Dying wife or
not, the lover throws a stroop each time a hospital visit means a
cancelled liason.

As to be expected, the husband has some life’s lessons to be learnt.
The film, for the most part is somewhat entertaining with gorgeous
folks, high energy club music and a nice little twist in the tale but by
its end, you can’t help hoping the the wife would ‘just die already’.
The much too-ing and fro-ing of the husband in the third act becomes
wearing. We get it. He’s a selfish man-child who actually loves his wife
and does not want to face the prospect of losing her – and the odd shag
here and there. Its clear which one will win out. Having said that, it’s a pretty unique twist on a narrative that would otherwise be a dull tragi-drama about a partner dying of a terminal illness.