25/03/2024 - Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet’s intimate and elegant documentary tells the story of a woman living in the shadow of a famous man

Bronx-born Joel Meyerovitz is one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers. His wife, Maggie Barrett of Cornwall, is a talented painter, writer and therapist who has been fighting for recognition all her life. It is in this imbalance in their relationship that another couple of artists, Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet, find the story of their documentary, Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, which had its world premiere at CPH:DOX and received a Special Mention in the DOX:AWARD competition (see the news).

But the film is about a lot more than a woman living in the shadow of a famous man: it is about love, caring, identity, creativity, ageing and dying. The co-directors set the scene by immersing the viewer into the first and key aspect: filmed from above, bathed in reddish light and surrounded by candles as they lie on the carpet, Joel and Maggie recall how they met some 25 years earlier. Now 84 and 75, respectively, they are still very much in love, but the burden of age, despite both of them being in top form, is increasingly weighing on them. 

After a lovely succession of alternating memories describing their life paths through archive photographs, we learn that for the last nine years they have been living in Tuscany. Joel owns an apartment in Manhattan but it is, at least for Maggie, haunted by his previous marriage and family. She, on the other hand, had a tumultuous life full of loss, rejection, depression, addiction and fight for identity. 

We first glimpse what is to come in an inverted way: a scene set in the New York flat and clearly shot later in the process, in which Maggie talks about noticing Joel’s age and feeling like she is in the same place herself, is placed before the key event for the narrative. Maggie slips on the street in the small Tuscan town and breaks her femur, which turns the older man into a caregiver. This shifts the already precarious balance in the relationship and also gives her more time — and a rather low mood — to reflect on her life. 

While she recovers, osteoporosis hits and they decide to go back to New York, with hilly Tuscany being too much of a challenge for her. Joel is enjoying his niche fame, giving talks, getting recognised in the street and preparing for a major retrospective at Tate. Meanwhile, back in an apartment that is a source of frustration and isolation for Maggie, we find her sitting on the floor and tearing up her dozens of journals. 

Perlmutter and Ouimet lived with the couple for an entire year, which allowed for an incredibly intimate access. They set their scenes with a photographer’s eye: the camera is almost always fixed and the two protagonists divide the frame, often in a playful and creative way, and powerfully in a key scene where Maggie takes centre stage while Joel is only hazily reflected in a mirror. This intense segment might seem too elaborately composed, but it shoots the emotional charge through the roof. 

Essentially, this is a very New York film, with Diogo Strausz’s nonchalantly alluring, piano-led score putting you in the heart of Manhattan. In this way, the film maintains the same unbalance as the marriage, but this works to underline the resilient power of love, and the film's very end belongs to Maggie. 

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a co-production between Denmark’s Final Cut for Real, the UK’s Undeniable and the USA’s Louverture Films. Cinetic Media has the international rights.