Movie Review: 'As Long As We Both Shall Live'

As Long as We Both Shall Live is a movie with a very tricky tone. The film opens on a couple, Malcolm and Sarah (Josh Helman and Orange is the New Black star, Yael Stone) who are loving and playful and sweet. Then, Sarah leaves to go to the store and never comes home. On her way to the store, Sarah was in an accident and was killed at the scene. When Josh arrived, she was still being taken from the crash site and the trauma is long lasting.

Cut to one year later, Josh is a drunk who sleeps all day. He’s taken his wife’s death quite hard and has somehow managed to not work for the past 12 months while being paid by his boss and business partner, Jim (Paul Sorvino). The one saving grace in Malcolm’s life is his sister-in-law, Dee (Yvonne Cone), who finally refuses to let him sulk. She’s spoken to Jim and he can no longer wait for Malcolm to start coming back to work.

Going back to work means actually leaving the house and with Dee being a bit of a trickster, it also means blind dates and nights out, something Malcolm is not at all prepared for. Nevertheless, at Dee’s urging, Malcolm follows through, though he also continues drinking too much and taking endless numbers of pills for this headache he has that won’t go away. He assumes it’s just a constant hangover.

One morning, on his way to work, Malcolm stops at his favorite coffee shop and manages to rescue the dignity of poor Nya (Jennifer Allcott) who waited and waited to order her coffee only to find that she’d forgotten her wallet. Her flummoxed reaction holds up the line, raising ire in the other patrons until Malcolm swoops in to pay for her coffee. She repays the chivalrous favor by sitting at his table and flirting with him until he agrees to come to her bar for a drink that night.

The romance is rather charming and the chemistry between Josh Helman and Jennifer Allcott is really fun. It’s a classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl scenario, nothing all that out of the box in terms of writing. It’s just elevated greatly by the likable characters and their tremendous chemistry. When Nya finds out that Malcolm is still mourning the loss of his wife, she questions whether it’s a good idea that they should get involved but Malcolm manages to assuage her fears, for a little while.

That begins to change when Malcolm suddenly begins to see the ghost of his late wife. Sarah has somehow risen from Malcolm’s subconscious and is manifesting herself in front of him and exposing all of his many insecurities. The fake Sarah is dour, manipulative and cruel, a complete 180 from the sweetheart we met when she was still alive. This manifestation of Sarah is intent on destroying his new relationship by using his guilt over Sarah’s death as a weapon against him.

Here, As Long as We Both Shall Live pulls off a pretty insane trick. The romance between Malcolm and Nya is all sweetness and light and romantic comedy cliché. The stuff between Malcolm and Sarah is straight out of Fatal Attraction and similar wronged woman thrillers. A writer-director would have to be a little crazy to bring these two genres together and yet, director Ali Askari does just that and he makes it work.

As Long as We Both Shall Live is wildly compelling and entertaining. The twists and turns of this ludicrous plot kept me engaged and thrilled throughout. I was fascinated by everything I saw in As Long As We Both Shall Live from the performances to the tremendous editing to the strong pace of the story being told. The whole movie is a dramatic tightrope walk that could easily tip over into nonsense and yet, via this cast and this director, it worked.

Be prepared for some serious whiplash from the genre switching and stretching going on in As Long As We Both Shall Live. That said, it’s exciting the whole way as you keep expecting the movie to trip and fall into ridiculous territory. I am probably more entertained by the sheer daring of the genre switching involved in As Long As We Both Shall Live as I am by the actual story being told. That fun may or may not translate for those of you who don’t spend much time thinking about genres.

As Long As We Both Shall Live is now available for On-Demand Rental on your favorite streaming services as of February 26th.